Americans have begun policing everything from their neighbor's bedrooms to the world's oil fields. Somewhere a light is going out. Legitimate law must not dictate what a man should do with his life, but only what he cannot do to others. To limit political demands to negative obligation distinguishes government's role as a protector of values, as opposed to a maker of values. Freedom is more than the state of being free from control or free from want.
Freedom is a positive assertion of individual dignity, the developed power of self-determination.
It is a statement of man as a moral agent. Without an ethics of aspiration, personal liberty becomes a vanity. Ethical living should be a celebration of life, a heroic adventure of human triumph. It is a triumph of, not over, self. A triumph within, not over, nature.