Just because I don’t know when is when, that doesn’t mean that when doesn’t exist.

I think we all can agree that there is a when. But, like me, we aren’t sure when that is.

We like to believe and expect and accept that everyone is responsible for their own actions. When we do the action, we made the choice, the choice is ours. We have the freedom of choice.

We also seem to realize that some people are not responsible. They’re “out of their (rational) mind.” We deal with them separately. They’re aberrations. They may need control, incarceration, suppressive drugs, medical intervention. There was a time, not long enough ago, when lobotomies were used to keep people in line, to cut out “divergence” and reduce those outliers again onto the “straight and narrow.”

We have a history, hundreds of years, of trying to find the way. We crow about our “democracy,” “created equal,” “freedom,” “liberty and justice for all.”

We want to believe that, and pretend that we do, and use it as a club of enforcement to beat people into line in a conformity of belief.
If we’ve dealt with aberration, we’re left with the rest of us, the body politic. To play the game, we have to follow the rules.

But we’re free to choose. What we choose is our own choice.

But when? When are we free to choose so we can be responsible and held accountable for our choices?

Certainly not as little children. They’re too young to know enough. They need guidance, parents who make decisions for them, curate their choices until they can choose on their own.

When I was young, I saw with some admiration, that the Catholic church was aware of the problem and tried a solution. In their case, it was centered on sin. When are you old enough, after doing a sin, that you can be held accountable for it, lose points and have to pay for it?

I was taught about “the age of reason” as “the age of choice and consent.” Before that age, you were too young to know the difference, and couldn’t be held accountable. You were not responsible for your actions.

It was like the age when you’re old enough to drive. One day before, you’re not old enough. The next day, miraculously, you’re ready. They already gave you a test to verify that you know the rules.

It’s like the voting age. One day before, you’re not old enough to vote. The next day, you are. In this case, you don’t have to pass a test to show you’re competent and ready, know the rules, able to choose.

There have been tests applied and enforced to keep people from voting. That caused problems, because too often the testers couldn’t pass their own test. We all know that if those tests were applied to all voters, the population of eligible voters would shrink dramatically.

But the question of readiness remains. When? The Catholic answer was seven. Seven years old.

Now you were accountable for your actions and could be punished for your sins.

Never mind that some children mature their minds early, and others grow up and never do.

With a sigh of relief, they say, “We’ve set the age. We’ve answered when. Now the little weasels are accountable and we can get them.”

Even if you’re not Catholic, you know there’s an age of accountability, and it’s early. Seven seems about right.

But then what do we do when children past seven make choices “we” don’t agree with?

We strip them of their freedom.

When are they old enough past seven and able to make choices, about their own lives, their own bodies?

The crushing answer resounds from above, “Never!”

And where has freedom gone?

Out of the law, and out the window.