Whew. I got a lot more agitated than I intended to here. And, I'm sure that some will
choose to challenge some of what I say (hello, Christopher! <g>), but my main
contention is that we are losing our rights and freedoms, and losing them BY
CHOICE. That really bothers me.
I don't challenge much of what you say at all, except to say that most Americans are quite happy to let go of their freedoms, which they see as theoretical, as long as the government will protect them from all possible evils.
Basically, we are doing away with any semblance of an individual's responsibility for his own welfare and behavior. We prefer to have the government take care of us. I've been saying this for 30 plus years, but getting nowhere. When it comes to the choice of having to sacrifice to get something, or having it come "free" from the government, whee, yea government.
Interesting lead Talk of the Town article in a recent New Yorker, don't recall exactly which week. During the last oil cost crisis, Carter went on TV to urge sacrifice, turn down the heat, pass legislation to increase car mileage, lower the speed limits. While I didn't think it was government's role to pass all this legislation -- if people wanted fuel efficient cars they could buy them, if people wanted to save fuel by slowing down they could, if people were willing to pay the price of expensive cars and driving fact and pay their gas bill they could -- at least the concept was to sacrifice something to get by. But today, the people demand lower gas bills but with no sacrifices. SUVs still sell well, homes are still heated and air cooled to the nth degree of comfort, etc. Yet people complain about paying for this.
Oops -- I matched your diatribe with my own! But I basically agree with you. But I don't blame the government -- they respond to the polls. I blame the people who have never known what it is NOT to have freedom, and therefore don't value it. It's like we take breathable air and clean water for granted, and don't value them until suddenly we lose them. Then it's a crisis.
But freedom is to empheral for that. Much harder to see when it's gone, much harder to get back when you lose it.
[Since your response was about Elian and the raid, let me just say that I was as disturbed as any at the image of "the" photo, but I also am willing to look behind the image to note that a) the Miami relatives had no legal right at all to keep Elian, and were refusing to turn him over to the proper authorities. If my son had been taken by his mother and then left with some relatives who refused to return him to me because they thought they could raise him better than I could, I would be demanding that law enforcement get him back before I went in myself with a submachine gun and got my son back. Wouldn't you? b) there had been armed guards observed on the premises in the past; if I were going in to a situation where I knew tempers were very frayed, there were hostile crowds and kidnappers inside, and there were or had been guns on the premises, I would want all the firepower at my disposal. c) the fact is that nobody was hurt, which was pretty amazing given the potential for violence. d) people keep talking about the warrant being illegal, but so far I've seen no evidence that it wasn't a legal warrant. e) if the government had been "smart" enough to keep photographers out of there, or inadvertently have their cameras suffer damage during the incident, there would be much, much less concern. I think the image overtook overbore the facts.] |
