The capacity of human beings to be busybodies never ceases to amaze me. Aristotle wrote that “man is by nature a social animal,” and he is a political animal as well. As such, virtue-signalling and puritanical social policing are probably here to stay, whether we like it or not.
Still, I’m always struck by how willing people are to butt into others lives—not just the curiosity of gossip, but the desire to control other people’s behavior, and even thoughts. I’m all about enforcing social norms through the soft power of culture, and even I don’t want to hassle people. I think hard drugs and prostitution should be illegal, sure, but only because those do demonstrable harm, physically, mentally, and spiritually, beyond the individual partaking in them. Otherwise, I’m more than willing to let people make their own mistakes, and to believe whatever kooky nonsense they’d like, so long as I’m afforded the same courtesy.
Maybe I’m not the best spokesman for a laissez-faire social life, but a broadly Jeffersonian-Jacksonian, rural outlander mentality should apply to our daily lives: you chase your squirrels, and I’ll chase mine. Often the very last thing I want to do is to give someone else a hard time about their lifestyle, beliefs, or the like, so long as they’re not forcing their insanity on me.
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The Portly Politico 