Urban Legend:Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.
America is a funny place. We want to keep Nature safe-as long it’s somewhere else. Here we want mining, logging, farming, drilling, endless miles of paved roads and all the normal stuff:hot and cold running water, electricity, gas, broadband, and at least 500 channels. Everywhere else-well, they should be Organic, All Natural, Old Growth, No Mining, No Drilling, No Clear Cutting, No Farming, no Paved Roads, and as close to the way the country was when Columbus stumbled onto San Salvador as possible.
We have the same simple logic when it comes to things like gun control, our elected government, religious freedom, and just all freedoms of all types in general. We, individually, are intelligent enough not to need laws. It’s all those other idiots out there that we have to watch out for. An argument that annoys Christians is that, if they were born in India, they wouldn’t be a Christian, they’d be a Hindu or a Buddhist. No, they avow sincerely, they would still find Jesus. Hmm, maybe-maybe not. The point of The Blind Side wasn’t that you can make it big if you’re a talented football player, the point was you can make it big if a rich white family adopts you.
Freedom is a scary bit of business. You can pass laws all you like, but the only thing that enforces them in individual choice. You can take away a drunk’s driver license, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hop behind the wheel and hit the road whenever he wants. We are all free to do whatever we want, though some actions can have life ending consequences. And if you are willing to face that consequence, than nothing can stop you.
Well, almost nothing. It’s a lot harder to highjack a plane now than it was before 9/11. For all the bitching and moaning about having to take off your shoes and stand in endless lines, that particular type of terrorism has been put in the history books. You can’t take over an airplane with a box-cutter any more. This didn’t require the banning of box-cutters, it just required the common sense idea that you have no logical reason to have one on an airplane.
I’ve been having an occasional debate with a facebook buddy about gun control. She thinks a lot like Robert A. Heinlein – “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” She’s for armed teachers, and well, so far as I can tell, armed everyone. I’m more along the lines of the box-cutters on airplanes, keep your guns if it makes you happy, but don’t carry them around me or anyone else that might get caught in the crossfire.
Her last comment on the subject was kind of interesting, she said that she wanted to keep history from repeating itself and that tyrants love an unarmed populous. I must have missed that lesson in history class. With the possible exception of Huey Long, American has never even close to having a proper tyrant. But let’s go ahead and say we have a coup and the next Hitler starts carpet bombing the cities that dare to oppose him-how exactly is your personal arsenal going to help? I guess you could bring about your own end a little quicker.
An old blog buddy says that we just need to lock up all the loonies, which is a good enough idea, except that given the right test, everyone would turn out to be a loonie. The weak point of any cleansing effort is the people who get to chose who needs to be culled and who needs to be kept. Odd, but the last time I looked at his blog he was talking about how much he hates eugenics-a key component of which was to get insane people out of the gene pool.
Americans want the same simple thing from our Government that we want from Nature. Fix all the problems over there, and leave us, right here, the hell alone. And do it fast, we’re tired of waiting.
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The thing about “locking up the loonies” reminds me of probably the only episode of “Gilligan’s Island” with an ounce of profundity.
The one where they put in a jail on the island. Pretty soon, they found no shortage of new laws to make, and reasons to imprison people. Soon all 7 of them ended up locked in the island jail, and they paid for their folly as a rescue plane flew low over the island during that time.
Ah now there was a show filled with moral dilemmas and deep philosophical issues.
A much shorted lived show was called oops, about a post apocalyptic world where a group of very Gillian like folks survived. They had no need for money and yet they created a currency, all of which was soon owned by one person and the rest were left with nothing.
As a fan Star Trek Voyager I am well aware of the Gillian’s Island effect of nearly getting home every week…
But Neelix was more unsufferable than Gilligan.
Agreed. Neelix is easily the most annoying character ever created for the Star Trek Universe, though Captain Archer does give him a run for his money.