OT : Are Americans to comfortable to be Free? SI Cool Post...
Message 15946104
People like me are
typically way to old and comfortable for this.
That's one of many good reasons for it. Our country IS too comfortable to be truly free. Freedom requires work, effort, initiative, self-sacrifice. Jefferson in his wisdom spoke of the link between growing wealth and the loss of freedom. How many people here value more freedom so highly that they would, as the Afghans did, go and live in caves to fight for it? Bread and circuses is still a great formula for subduing a people and making them happy with their subjugation. The communist party got its foothold in the US during the depression, when people had nothing left to lose, and were therefore willing to risk the nothing they had for a dream of a better life. (Not that I think communism really did offer a better life, but that was the dream.) Today communism has been buried by wealth and money. Wealthy people don't become communists!
Another problem we have is our total aversion to risk. Our society is trying to eliminate all risks. Mandatory seat belt laws. Mandatory crash standards for vehicles. Litigation galore for almost any ill that comes to a person. We have lost any concept that life is risky, that death is a natural part of life. We think we deserve to live forever.
How many people today who are in their 30s and have a comfortable living wage would be truly willing to pledge "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" to any cause? Nuts. We'll write a check for a good cause, maybe. Attend a fancy fund raiser, sure as long as the food and entertainment are up to standard. Write an email to our congressman if we have time. That's about it.
We have become so comfortable with our lack of freedom that we don't notice it's gone. Like an animal in a zoo, we're well fed, well cared for, for what should lwe want to go back to freedom it it means the dangers of the jungle? |
