Freedom to do what, exactly? You realize that the extreme opposite of laws and restrictions meant to maintain a working social order is anarchy, right?

> Freedom to do what, exactly?

You may be failing to comprehend the concept of "freedom".

Please, O wise one, explain "freedom" to the political scientist and lawyer you're talking to. Let me get my popcorn first.

> Please, O wise one, explain "freedom" to the political scientist and lawyer you're talking to. Let me get my popcorn first.

If you think only "political scientists and lawyers" have to decide what a freedom is, you have quite a totalitarian mindset.

If you have some arguments, pray tell. "I'm the smartest guy here" is not an argument. It's just something an NPC would say when they run out of arguments.

PS: This is not ad hominem. It's a dismissal of your claim of authority.

I'm afraid you missed the point of my reply. You have to assume here that the people you're arguing with may, in fact, be as smart as, or even more knowledgeable than you regarding certain subjects; and that dismissive replies like "You may be failing to comprehend the concept of 'freedom'" put you way out of line and at risk of having your ass handed to you. Come armed with substance, not snipes.

Where I said that?

You didn’t say that; the person I was responding to did. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47123782

You responded to me :)

There's 190,000 pages of CFR that are essentially bound as law, almost entirely written and maintained by unelected bureaucrats.

They've been deciding what "freedom" is for a long time (even deciding what constitutional rights are, on occasion, see ATF bureaucrats constantly publishing and changing rules re-deciding what constitutional restraints they think there are on the 2A).

Of course, these "scientist and lawyers" know they have this power, and are so seeped in it, they occasionally forget when they step out of the ivory tower that the plebs (and indeed, the foundational ideals USA was built on written by those such as Locke) usually either disagree with it or aren't aware that much of the USA functions under "credentialism/technocrat makes right" and the scientist and the lawyer as the arbiter of freedom.

This feels like one of those moments when the technocrats forget that they've shed the thin façade they hide behind.

No political thread would be complete without a Second Amendment absolutist joining the conversation in order to derail it. They're joining sooner than ever!

I am so sorry. I didn't realize you had a *political science* degree.

I'll get my simpleminded ass out of here leave this discussion to the scientists.

Alternatively, you could provide a substantive and respectful argument instead of a snipe, as you should have done in the first place.

I'm sorry but I don't think I have the proper training to debate someone so far outside of my intellectual weight class.

The opposite of something like Bastiat's ideal of the law is something more like the law of tyranny or law of the plunderer. Anarchy I place somewhere closer to the middle -- better than the law of a tyrant because at least under anarchy the law of the tyrant isn't legitimized even if it still might be enforced by might.