As 2010 draws to a close, the 2001-2010 decade comes to an end as well.
And, it seems to me that, over the past decade, we’ve been going backwards a lot. Too much, I fear.
Things started out so well. We were all so worried about the year 2000, from Y2K to miscellaneous fears that the end of the world was near and so on. But, January 1, 2000 came and went and we were all still here.
And things seemed to be on such a high note. We made it. And it seemed the future was well within our grasp.
Then, of course, came September 11, 2001. Since then, it seems the terrorists have been winning. Certainly, in terms of mass casualties, they’ve had limited success since 2001. But, in terms of affecting our country and the world around us, they’ve been winning.
In the name of “safety” and “security,” politicians have been curtailing our freedoms left and right. And many of these measures provide little more than an illusion of safety. There are new reporting requirements on your bank transactions, for example. And, now, to board an airplane, you have to be exposed to a virtual strip search or be molested by ill-trained, uncaring government employees.
And, when people expose the flaws in the so-called security measures, they are punished, sidelined and silenced.
There are new laws restricting people, for example, from recording encounters with police. There was one politician who just about assaulted someone trying to ask him a question. (If I remember right, that clown was not re-elected, fortunately.)
Additionally worrisome is how people go along with things. When a former Baywatch actress was selected for a full body scan, there were comments on forums that she should have been fine with it, since she once posed for Playboy.
I suppose it makes sense, right? After all, we all know the terrorists were a group of disgruntled, blonde swimsuit models bent on world domination. Oh, wait, they weren’t…
Heaven forbid we should use some common sense. But, common sense isn’t politically correct.
Of course, picking out hot women in a crowd and targeting them for their choice of a full body scan or getting felt up so a bunch of government workers can get their jollies for the day isn’t really protecting anyone. Yet, people will defend the nonsense because they can enjoy the illusion that these things are actually protecting us.
Then we have stuff like the CPSIA, which was a knee-jerk reaction by dimwitted politicians to lead-tainted toys that came from China. But the burden of the new regulations was on American small businesses that weren’t responsible for the mess, placing new financial burdens on them while providing the bigger manufacturers—the ones that had been responsible for the lead-tainted goods—more leeway in reducing their costs of compliance. Small businesses, for example, had to use expensive third-party testing whereas the big manufacturers could have their own in-house testing labs. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse!
And, now, with the healthcare law that passed last year—without the morons who passed it even reading the stuff, proclaiming proudly that it needed to be passed before we could learn what was in it—there are additional requirements on small businesses in 1099 reporting requirements, which is going to be a huge mess and result in increased costs for small businesses when they can least afford it.
And guess who those costs will be passed along to? Yeah, the consumer. So, the politicians are going to put increased financial burdens on companies already struggling, in a time of high unemployment, which will raise the costs of things for those with and without jobs. Smart move—not!
Yet, people think that politicians are really good at heart, that they really mean well and want to help us.
Well, consider this… For traffic lights, studies have shown that having the lights stay yellow longer reduces accidents. It gives drivers more time to clear the intersections or to come to a stop.
In spite of this, politicians across the country have been reducing yellow light times.
Why? Well, so they can catch more drivers running red lights. And that means more traffic tickets and fees, which means more money in the government coffers for the politicians to spend.
Nevermind that it comes at a cost of public safety. They can stand up on their cardboard podiums all they want and proclaim their actions are for the public good, but they aren’t. If it was all about safety, they would increase yellow light durations, not decrease them. But, they don’t really care about safety. They care about more money in the government coffers, so that they can bribe us with our own money to get re-elected.
They only care about maintaining an illusion of safety. And, if something happens that pokes a hole in that illusion, they’ll find some patsy to blame instead of admitting that government policies—their policies—were to blame.
Why should you expect politicians to be any different at the federal level? You shouldn’t.
Don’t forget about the whole global warming sham either. Yes, sham. For years, politicians and government-funded scientists have been warning about our impending demise at the hands of warmer temperatures. They’ve blamed the carbon dioxide we release into the air. They even want to label carbon dioxide—which we produce each time we exhale—as a “pollutant.”
They’ve told us it leads to a greenhouse effect, where the earth’s entire atmosphere will heat up and continue to get warmer and warmer.
The situation was dire. Their agendas didn’t immediately get passed into law. Their dire predictions that, if we didn’t change things immediately, there would be no hope for us, did not come to pass. Warming slowed. Cooling began to happen—in sharp contrast with their predictions of spiked increases in temperatures. Some even made the ridiculous claim that global warming could cause global cooling.
Yeah, politicians aren’t exactly the sharpest crayons in the box.
Then, realizing Mother Nature had called their bluff, they began to change tactics. Instead of “global warming,” they now referred to their imagined crisis as “climate change.” That way, whatever the weather does, they can say it’s all out fault.
And, still, they want to regulate carbon dioxide. They want companies—and eventually us all—to measure our “carbon footprints.” This all in spite of the fact that the greenhouse effect did not happen, that the warming apparently caused by our “carbon footprints” did not continue its projected upward spike. No, their lies have been laid waste; they just keep covering it up with more and more excuses.
Not to mention the last couple years of Congress ramming legislation through against the wishes of the people they are supposed to represent. Legislation that was hastily written, often by invested groups with their own agendas and not by the people that are actually supposed to represent us, and legislation that was largely unread by the people that voted on and passed it!
And that’s the road we’re heading down. Less freedom. Some people think we’re simply trading a little freedom for a more safety, but what we are really doing is giving up a lot more freedom than we realize in exchange for what is largely an illusion of increased safety.
Deep down, I believe, and continue to believe, that freedom works. We are where we are today not because of a bunch of politicians sitting around micro-managing our lives but because we have long enjoyed the freedom to manage our own lives.
We don’t need bureaucrats telling us where we can and cannot go and determining how we can and cannot get there. We don’t need them telling us what to read or watch or listen to. We don’t need them telling us what we can or cannot eat. And so on.
It used to be that I worried about politicians sticking their noses in our bedrooms and their hands in our wallets. But, nowadays, it’s more like they’ve got their hands down our pockets, their fingers in our wallets and they want to take a picture on themselves doing it and put it on the Internet.
I think we are on the verge of great things. New technologies, cures for diseases, more discoveries and so on. But, we need the freedom to find them. We don’t need Nanny Government watching over our shoulder, recording and judging our every move. We don’t need the artificial obstacles standing in our way. We need to be free.
Freedom works. Look how far we have come in the past 200 years. Do you think anyone in 1810 could even imagine being able to talk face-to-face with someone on the other side of the world on a metal and glass device they could hold in their hand? Do you think they could imagine sending a message and having it reach its destination across town, across the country or across the ocean in a matter of seconds? Do you think they could have imagined holding an entire library of books in the palm of their hand?
Just imagine where we could be 200 years from now. But, that depends on a future where we are free and not one in which we are herded about here and there as though we were cattle. When was the last time you saw a cow create something that changed the world?
Tell the politicians to take their fear-mongering and their deceptive claims of “security” and their false cries of “it’s for the children” and tell them to stuff it. People yearn to be free. People deserve to be free. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights. Inalienable. These are not rights that the government or the politicians said we could have. They are our inherent rights. Our government exists to preserve and protect our rights, not to take them away from us.
Freedom works.
Too many politicians these days seem to think they are elected to rule over us, not to serve us. They think that they should determine what freedoms we can keep. They think that they should decide how we can live, what liberties we may exercise and what happiness we may pursue. But, those are not things for them to decide. Those our reserved for us.
You have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
When the politicians forget this, remind them. When they ignore this, remind them. When they stomp on this, remind them. Write them. Call them. Speak truth to power. Call them out. If they are on Twitter, remind them there. If they are on Facebook, remind them there. Blog about it. Make videos. Let them know who they work for. Let them know who they serve.
And, if they continue to act as petty dictators, if they continue to want to control your life and restrict your freedoms, boot them out of office.
Freedom works. Freedom benefits us all. Freedom moves us forward. Let us be free.
