Everyday there are either more laws past limiting our civil liberties in the United States, or there are bills in the process of being voted on to become law. With the loss of more and more civil liberties, the average Citizen will no longer be apart of what the United States was originally founded on; Freedom. An essay called "On Liberty", by John Stuart Mill, is a powerful essay in which Mill makes the reader aware of his idea of what freedom really is, "that of our own goon in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it". If this is what freedom is, then the United States is far from it.
From the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson stated that everyone is free to the pursuit of happiness. Now days this right in the Declaration of Independence seems to have faded away with the ever increasing laws of this country. Earlier this week, a law was passed denying the right for stripers to give lap dances, and they must be at least 6 feet away from any spectators. This law deprives happiness to the dancers, since many of them depend on lap dances to make extra money. This law was passed because it is believed that lap dancing leads to prostitution and drug use. Mill writes, "Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." This means that censorship is .
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worse then toleration. This law deprives stripers of there given right of the pursuit of happiness.
One of the biggest issues in the United States is abortion. There are many how support it and those that are against it. This issue can be easily addressed with the writings of Mill, "The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute.
