Stellar op-ed by David Boaz. And no, I’m not just sucking up. Excerpt:

Too many people these days think “choice” only refers to abortion. I’d like to hear a presidential candidate say, “I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I believe in a woman’s right to choose whether to have a child. I believe in a woman’s right to choose any job someone will hire her for. I believe in a woman’s right to choose to own a gun. I believe in a woman’s right to choose the school she thinks is best for her child, public or private. I believe in a woman’s right to choose what kinds of art she will spend her money on, even if she prefers Madonna or Randy Travis and Congress wants to give her money to Robert Mapplethorpe or Luciano Pavarotti. I believe in a woman’s right to choose to drive a cab, even if she doesn’t have a license. I believe in a woman’s right to choose the employees she wants for her business, even if they don’t fit some government quota. I believe in a woman’s right to choose the drugs she prefers for recreation, whether she chooses Coors or cocaine. I believe in a woman’s right to choose how to spend all of her hard-earned money, without giving half of it to the government.”

…When a Republican president is holding U.S. citizens without a court hearing, implementing a Total Information Awareness program to compile information on all citizens, and spending more taxpayers’ money on every nook and cranny of the federal government, it’s great to hear leading Democrats talk about freedom, trusting people to make their own decisions, and limiting the power of the state. It would be even better if they applied those noble principles to more than one, and only one, issue.

Read it all. The dig at Howard Dean is especially delicious.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 29th, 2003 at 12:04 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.