What Price Individual Liberty?
Follow-Up To Our Article “Obama, You Leave Me No Choice!”
For almost the entire existence of the American Republic, courts have tried to put a price on a life that was snuffed out early, or rendered permanently disabled, due to the negligence or criminal act of another. In some cases, it is merely a matter of arithmetic….how much was the person earning at the time of his death or disability, then multiplied by the life expectancy of that person. From those two components a dollar figure is computed. Unfortunately, the dollar figure does not account for unexpected events in the deceased or disabled person’s life that could increase that dollar figure by many factors, such as an invention, or a new job with greater potential, or winning the lottery, or an unexpected inheritance, much less inflation.
But what price individual liberty? How do you put a price on a person’s freedom? What components would enter into an equation to establish a dollar figure on personal liberty that a court could use to determine the value of the loss of that liberty? The difficulty in establishing a dollar figure for liberty is because there are degrees of freedom, ranging from abject slavery to absolute freedom. The former is the absence of freedom and the latter would grant unlimited freedom, thereby taking freedom away from others.
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
