[fraternité]

I have noticed on this forum a rather subtle tendency for people's attitudes to conform linguistically to one of two groups as regards government, and I'd be interested in seeing if this is conscious or not by looking at the numbers who choose each option.

The two groups are as follows:

The "prevented from" group, who will starts threads along the lines of "should x be banned", "should the government prevent x" etc. These are the people, it seems, who see government as an imposition on 'state of nature' type society, and whose positive actions entail denying certain freedoms.

The "allowed to" group seem to take it as a given that the government has a pre-existing, (generally benevolent) patriarchal monopoly on freedoms, and tend towards threads such as "should x be allowed" etc. These posters seem to view the positive actions of government as granting freedoms from this patriarchal, omnipresent state - that whatever people may do is the action of government.

I would like to ask, which of these two broad categories do you see yourself as representing?

My expectation is that many people unconsciously take the latter attitude, but in this poll the former will be the clear victor.


An example of the differences could be, for example, "should the government [continue to] ban the use of cannabis?" vs "should the government allow cannabis?"

[Solid_Snake_100]

I voted for "allowed to"

[Loxley]

I think your linguistic angle fails to take the nature of the thing being discussed into account;

For example; should the government allow the legalisation of drugs?
Compared to; should the government prevent us from taking/ban alcohol?

It often depends on the original situation as that then changes the action that the government is taking. We wouldn't say they've stopped banning drugs, we'd say they've legalised drugs. Equally, we wouldn't say they've stopped allowing alcohol, we'd say they've banned alcohol.

It's action that they're taking - not the action they've stopped taking - we would describe.

[AnythingButChardonnay]

We should be told what we can't do rather than told what we can do.

[Sarahl89]

I put prevented from..

[nolongerhearthemusic]

Prevented from. Things are allowed until they are banned.