Imagine you're watching your favourite surgery-room drama. The first few minutes focus on some inane, soap opera like drivel between the unendingly clever yet woefully jaded head doctor and a female underling who is both too young and far too attractive in scrubs (seriously, does she spend five hours in makeup before hitting the floor to get covered in blood and urine?).
Just then, the door bursts open and two EMTs with chiseled abs and perfect hair wheel in the victim of a brutal beating (who also has pretty nice hair). The victim, blood spewing from multiple knife wounds, is sped into the nearest operating room while the music gains a few drum beats. The doctor, now with his face mask on and somehow scrubbed up and ready to go in less than five seconds, enters the room. His eyes grow wide as the camera pans in.
"Band aid." The hot underling immediately complies.
"He's still bleeding. Another band aid, Jessica." The patient groans and a knife wound, loosely held shut by a band aid, starts to come back open. "I'm losing him; I need more band aids!"
After a few commercials and some horribly out of place witty banter over a dying trauma victim, the doctor succeeds in patching up the victim. With lots and lots of band aids.
If this were a real television drama, it wouldn't even make it on the air. Why, then, do we not only accept but demand that our country be ran in the same way? Bailouts, stimulus packages, electing politicians who promise to do the least amount of damage; they're all band aids, and meanwhile the country is bleeding out.
Just like the trauma victim needs the holes patched up so he can heal, the country needs its wounds closed so it can heal and grow. But band aids (i.e., quick fixes) won't do it. We need to address the hemorrhaging in a drastic way, and then make sure it doesn't happen again. A band aid might work to stop small cuts, but deep rents in tissue that threaten life require a lot more circumspection and intentionality.
Our Republic, to this author's mind, is floundering. We the People have given up our right to self-govern for the promise of a few quick benefits that naturally come from a huge tax pool. What we need to do is step back, asses the real problems, and start stitching them up.
To fully understand the problem with our government (mostly Federal, but the States have manifold issues, too), we first need to define the purpose of our government. Why does our government exist? We are a nation of laws and rights; what role does the government have in these things? Without waxing too historic on it, I'll simply hand out the answer: government is here to, through the use of law, ensure our rights. Not to grant, deny, manufacture, or interpret our rights; ensure them. Period. Taxation is a necessary evil in order for the government to have the ability to enforce the laws designed to protect our rights.
Ask yourself: does this sound like what most politicians promise for us? Does this sound at all like the debate we currently have on a surfeit of issues confronting our nation? Why not?
The answer lies in the beauty of our nation: Personal Sovereignty. The problem lies in the logical conclusion of Personal Sovereignty: Personal Responsibility. We have abdicated our God-given right to Personal Sovereignty because of the fear of Personal Responsibility.
Personal Sovereignty says that you can make a business for whatever purpose you like (provided it does not infringe upon the Personal Sovereignty of others). We like this. Personal Responsibility says that, should the business fail, you will possibly be left poor and struggling. We don't like this. Socialism says that, as long as your business conforms to the will of the powers that be, you can run it into the ground and someone will be there to help you pick up the pieces when it inevitably falls apart. Apparently, if recent history is at all a guide, we like this a lot.
Socialism has cut deep wounds into our once great nation. America is bleeding out red, white, and blue into the soil. A great many costly band aids have been applied, yet still we bleed. We bleed our jobs, we bleed our currency's value, and we bleed our Personal Sovereignty. It's time we stop patching the wounds with ineffective, short term solutions and start addressing the real problem. Are we up to the task?
I suppose time will, as always, tell. I for one will be eagerly awaiting the end of the next commercial break, and hoping our intrepid doctor, Personal Sovereignty, is able to man up and start stitching.
Showing posts with label individual rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label individual rights. Show all posts
March 9, 2010
November 18, 2009
Free Dumb
Have you ever watched someone eating and driving, or mountain biking with no helmet, or listening to Hannah Montana and just wanted to reach out and smack them? Seriously; what's wrong with some people? Isn't there anything we can do to curb this blatant idiocy before they all start to breed and promulgate the "stupid" gene?
Sadly, the answer appears to be "yes." Here are a couple of the more blatant examples from recent legislation:
-Driving with a Cell Phone
-Smoking in Restaurants
The banning of these things is atrocious, and patently un-American. Don't believe me? Read on, my pinko-commie-fascist friend!
Driving with a Cell Phone
Yes, driving must have rules for safety. No, I'm not advocating for a complete abolition of traffic safety regulations and stop lights. What I'm getting at is that when the government bans cell phone use in the car, it is arbitrary and intrusive. In short, it is legislating behaviour and not action.
We all know people who can drive, talk on the cell-phone (non hands-free, no less), blare the radio, and eat a burger at the same time all while staying in their lane and avoiding an accident. Contrarily, we also know those who could have hands at 10 and 2, no superfluous noise, no passengers, and no controlled substances in them and still manage to hit a parked bus while going the wrong way down a one-way street. The behaviour of the second driver is much more conducive to good driving, but the actions are not.
Now, does a cell phone distract someone while they are driving? Of course, to a greater or lesser degree. So does the radio, a passenger, the events of your day, billboards, a passing S-10 slammed with 24" rims, and a three hundred pound man in spandex trying to jog. With all of these distractions (and more), how do we ensure that people are being safe while driving? Do we institute a law that bans looky-loos from rubbernecking at accidents or joggers? Ban eating in the car? Outlaw car radios? Ban cell phone use? Limit vehicles to the driver only to avoid distractions from passengers?
The answer is what we've already done. You can't (or, at least, shouldn't) legislate behaviour; only actions. We implement laws stating how one must drive; stay in your lane, speed limits, the person on the right at a four-way stop has the right of way, etc. If you can follow all of those while playing pong on your modded DS, so be it. If you can't follow them even while doing everything you learned in driver's-ed, prepare for tickets, insurance claims, and friends always offering to drive.
Smoking in Restaurants
But, but second hand smoke kills! Think of the poor waiters and waitresses that are dying just because they went to work! The children; think of the children!!!!! You don't hate children . . . do you?
Here's a novel idea for all those (including me) who don't want to dine or work in a dingy, smoke-filled restaurant or bar: don't. Go somewhere else. Do you know what happens to businesses that have people that won't patronise them due to a policy of theirs? They change the policy or go out of business. It's called "voting with your feet," and it's even more effective than real voting.
But don't you, the waitress, and the children have a right to not smoke if you choose not to? Of course. At the same time, the owner of the restaurant has a right to allow smoking in their property. Should you refrain from dining there, both sets of rights remain intact. Should you be forced to dine there, or the owner forced to ban legal smoking there, one or the other's rights have been infringed.
If you infringe upon another's rights to life, liberty, and their pursuit of happiness, you have crossed the line from simply exercising your rights to outright bullying. Laws that infringe on one person's rights to stave off the possibility of having another's violated (and not the imminent possibility, like traffic laws) are merely state-sanctioned bullying. This is why so many people are against cell-phone laws, seat-belt laws, smoking bans in restaurants, and the like. (Disclaimer: follow the laws, people. Just because you disagree doesn't get you off the hook from following it. But, we do have a system in place to change the laws.)
The bottom line in all this is that you have the right to be an idiot. You have the freedom to be dumb. You can't (constitutionally) legislate someone out of being stupid, but you can legislate against things stupid people do that affect the rights of others. No, talking on a cell phone while driving does not affect anyone's rights. No, smoking legal substances on private property does not affect anyone's rights. But banning them does.
Sadly, the answer appears to be "yes." Here are a couple of the more blatant examples from recent legislation:
-Driving with a Cell Phone
-Smoking in Restaurants
The banning of these things is atrocious, and patently un-American. Don't believe me? Read on, my pinko-commie-fascist friend!
Driving with a Cell Phone
Yes, driving must have rules for safety. No, I'm not advocating for a complete abolition of traffic safety regulations and stop lights. What I'm getting at is that when the government bans cell phone use in the car, it is arbitrary and intrusive. In short, it is legislating behaviour and not action.
We all know people who can drive, talk on the cell-phone (non hands-free, no less), blare the radio, and eat a burger at the same time all while staying in their lane and avoiding an accident. Contrarily, we also know those who could have hands at 10 and 2, no superfluous noise, no passengers, and no controlled substances in them and still manage to hit a parked bus while going the wrong way down a one-way street. The behaviour of the second driver is much more conducive to good driving, but the actions are not.
Now, does a cell phone distract someone while they are driving? Of course, to a greater or lesser degree. So does the radio, a passenger, the events of your day, billboards, a passing S-10 slammed with 24" rims, and a three hundred pound man in spandex trying to jog. With all of these distractions (and more), how do we ensure that people are being safe while driving? Do we institute a law that bans looky-loos from rubbernecking at accidents or joggers? Ban eating in the car? Outlaw car radios? Ban cell phone use? Limit vehicles to the driver only to avoid distractions from passengers?
The answer is what we've already done. You can't (or, at least, shouldn't) legislate behaviour; only actions. We implement laws stating how one must drive; stay in your lane, speed limits, the person on the right at a four-way stop has the right of way, etc. If you can follow all of those while playing pong on your modded DS, so be it. If you can't follow them even while doing everything you learned in driver's-ed, prepare for tickets, insurance claims, and friends always offering to drive.
Smoking in Restaurants
But, but second hand smoke kills! Think of the poor waiters and waitresses that are dying just because they went to work! The children; think of the children!!!!! You don't hate children . . . do you?
Here's a novel idea for all those (including me) who don't want to dine or work in a dingy, smoke-filled restaurant or bar: don't. Go somewhere else. Do you know what happens to businesses that have people that won't patronise them due to a policy of theirs? They change the policy or go out of business. It's called "voting with your feet," and it's even more effective than real voting.
But don't you, the waitress, and the children have a right to not smoke if you choose not to? Of course. At the same time, the owner of the restaurant has a right to allow smoking in their property. Should you refrain from dining there, both sets of rights remain intact. Should you be forced to dine there, or the owner forced to ban legal smoking there, one or the other's rights have been infringed.
If you infringe upon another's rights to life, liberty, and their pursuit of happiness, you have crossed the line from simply exercising your rights to outright bullying. Laws that infringe on one person's rights to stave off the possibility of having another's violated (and not the imminent possibility, like traffic laws) are merely state-sanctioned bullying. This is why so many people are against cell-phone laws, seat-belt laws, smoking bans in restaurants, and the like. (Disclaimer: follow the laws, people. Just because you disagree doesn't get you off the hook from following it. But, we do have a system in place to change the laws.)
The bottom line in all this is that you have the right to be an idiot. You have the freedom to be dumb. You can't (constitutionally) legislate someone out of being stupid, but you can legislate against things stupid people do that affect the rights of others. No, talking on a cell phone while driving does not affect anyone's rights. No, smoking legal substances on private property does not affect anyone's rights. But banning them does.
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