The Herding of the Public Sheep
First, let me say that I love this country and I love my freedoms. ALL of them. I hold a deep appreciation for the sacrifices that have been made by others in order to preserve those freedoms. Apparently, our leadership does not. After reading some of the unilaterally endorsed bills that are on the hill right now, I have come to a new understanding of what it means to possess freedom. The sacrifices of freedom which our government has been considering in ’quick fix’ solutions to wide ranging problems such as teenage violence and domestic terrorism, in order to attain some artificial level of safety, is staggering.
Tyndall once wrote “It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste.” What he says here is that every one of us whom merely accepts the paradigms put forth by our institutions, and takes no action to analyze or comprehend their underlying basis for ourselves, behaves reprehensibly. When a society does this, it moves closer to self-extinction. Fortunately, the founding fathers realized this. They took action within our government to limit its power, and to pass the majority of the scope of decision making into the hands of the society, where it belongs. This most honorable and grave responsibility is now being taken away from us.
This brings me to my point. There has been a tremendous shift in the stance on government toward control in the politics of protection lately. I would really like to know why. Why are We, the people milling about as a herd of sheep waiting to be fed? What in the hell are we thinking? Are we so devoid of personal awareness that it has now become acceptable to sacrifice every bit of our humanity in order to avoid confrontation when we see somebody step out of line? I would swear that I’ve heard bleating a couple of times!
Recent proposals by our government have been put forth to create further restrictions on our constitutional freedoms in areas ranging from purchase of firearms to the ability to visit the local public library and check out classical reading material. Such sacrifices of personal and private freedoms could only come from a society programmed to accept whatever dogma is spewed forth by the media as gospel, and the truly frightening part is that these proposals are being met with significant public support!
Why not simply require thought? That’s it. Require people to think before they act, and punish them appropriately when they don’t. It isn’t an enforceable law, and it shouldn’t be. When we observe something that’s obviously wrong, we should correct it and leave an impression. Place the responsibility for transgressions on the culprit and stop punishing society. It isn’t society’s fault if some idiot decides to start molesting children. Enough of the touchy-feely you can be rehabilitated and become a productive member of society garbage.
Make it hurt.
Because if we don’t, it wont be long before it’s time for our ’federally mandated’ neural implants. It’s for our own protection. Really.
Of course, that just my opinion, I could be wrong!
But I doubt it
--Yotko
Yotko is an arrogant know-it-all whose occasional unsyndicated opinion column, A Rant of My Own,
fails to appear in more than 250 papers nationwide.
