Recently, we met with a friend of my wife. As the saying goes, if this woman didn’t have bad luck, she’d have no luck, at all. She has two sons. The youngest graduated college and has a reasonably good job. Though he’s engaged now, his previous girlfriend had his bastard child — the third or fourth by as many fathers — and he’s stuck paying child support. (The young woman had claimed she was on birth control.)

Our friend’s ex-husband is a drunk who takes an occasional job but mostly survives by sponging off his elderly mother or stray women he meets on the Internet. Before they divorced long ago, he racked up tax debts he never paid but that now form a lien on the house this woman “owns.” He also never paid any child support for his two sons.

This person’s oldest son is a drug addict. Despite numerous opportunities to obtain a good education and with decent jobs utilizing his skills, he pissed it all away doing drugs. He pissed away one stint at rehab. He was arrested for driving without a license and skipping bail. He was arrested for drugs in a bigger city and is still dealing with that. He hooked up with another drug addict and now has a bastard child of his own. He and his girlfriend and their baby are living with the woman’s parents.

Now. One would think this woman would recognize that making drug use a criminal offense merely compounds the problems an addict faces. Indeed, when she told us her eldest son’s girlfriend was fired — despite being a good salesperson — when her employer discovered she had a felony drug conviction, I thought she would understand when I said how wrong it was to have drug use be illegal.

Incredulous, I stared at this woman and pointed out the parallels between the Drug War and alcohol Prohibition; the kinds of similar problems each caused. But, she said, “there would be more addicts.” So? So what? Finally, I said, “My body, my choice.” I have the right to consume whatever I want to. But, no. That made no difference.

Nothin’. Blank out.

I found out later that she simply wanted us to “agree to disagree” and not talk about the topic anymore.

First off, this is one of those mealy-mouthed evasions so common today. Now, I am not saying that sometimes it is pointless to discuss issue X, given results that go nowhere. But her intent was that we should simply disagree as though this issue were of no real importance and our disagreement of no significant relevance to our relationship. In any such conflict, however, we can both be wrong, but we cannot both be correct. At the least, if I am in error on subject X, I prefer to know how and why I am mistaken. Otherwise, how can I exist in harmony with reality? Reality is the standard for determining truth; the standard for determining what the proper course of action is in any given context; the standard for determining what is moral or immoral, that is, helpful or destructive behavior. “Not talking” about X accomplishes nothing positive.

I, for one, am not interested in self-destruction. Self-sacrifice is anathema to my very being. I cannot relate to those who seek out evasion — a desire not to know what one knows — or to “know” via dogma or faith what one does not know in the absence of evidence, logic, and rational argumentation.

I wonder what this woman — or her ilk — would say if I sat across from her and proclaimed that women were second-class people who should be kept subservient and pregnant and devoid of the right to vote or own property. Or if I proclaimed that Jews and blacks were inferior creatures that needed to be suppressed lest they get too uppity and forget their proper places. Or if I declared that blacks should be slaves and Jews kept in concentration camps until they can be properly dealt with.

Yeah, right.

So, yes. I do agree that we disagree. I disagree with anyone and everyone who believes to any extent that they own a second of my life, a penny of my property, a scintilla of my existence.

No, I will not pretend that those who view me — to whatever degree — as their slave, as their milk cow, as their property are not responsible for their sick and twisted beliefs, that they should get a “pass” in the name of political correctness or social niceties, that I should be emotionally unaffected by the collectivists and mystics and thugs of the world who feel “justified” in imposing their brute force wishes upon my life...with only silence and acquiescence expected from me.

My life is not theirs to direct.

This inversion of what is sacred and proper can lead only to the further deterioration of our society and of the peaceful bonds that should bind us together. The sanctimonious and self-righteous claims of nearly all Americans today to what they have neither earned nor deserve drown out the isolated voices of those who truly understand and seek to implement the single path to a prosperous and ethical future.

I refuse to paint a patina of propriety on violence masked as goodness. I will name that which they do not want to be named. I will not bend my head and blindfold my own eyes to make their barbarity easier. I cannot betray the core of who and what I am.

I will disagree — and fight — for as long as it takes.