Letters to the Editor
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Thank you, bucky
This is not true. One can get people together to form a program to feed the hungry and homeless and there will be no outcry about individual rights. It is when you leave the area of voluntary cooperation and force people to do your will that you will hear an outcry.
You've found an interesting exception, perhaps (I suppose you have never heard of NIMBYism being applied to homeless shelters), and I will confess to a bit of rhetorical exaggeration. But it is exactly that response of "you are forcing tyranny upon me by asking me to step to the side on a public escalator, let alone to register my howitzer" that I was portraying as a typical American reflexive response to any kind of socially-oriented action. In short, thank you for stepping up and providing an example.
To be precise, it's not a matter of approving of the use of force, it's more a matter of defining "force" so broadly that everything except getting the hell out of the way fits into it.
And of course feeding the hungry is fine in America if it's faith-based and therefore "voluntary." I wonder what would happen if one proposed using taxes (gasp!) to do so. It's exactly that withering of the public space that allows faith and corporate welfare to creep in.
Even if you think an action is "for everyone's own good", others may well disagree with you.
That's what democratic debate is for. It's funny---I almost responded jokingly to Glenn's reasonable request by calling it "Socialism!" It's exactly what I'm talking about. Acting with restraint in public on one's own initiative shouldn't be so hard. It shouldn't require either maternal or paternal nannyism, nor lead to anarchy.