On Freedom
July 13th, 2006 by aBhantiarna Solas

I try hard not to wax political here. I get my dander up sometimes and I don’t like to get the dander of others up. But this gets under my skin and I can’t let it go. My mother drew our attention to it. Here’s a link to the whole article, but this is the paragraph that caught my eye:

The intelligence reform act incorporated recommendations from the commission that studied the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; President Bush signed the bill in December. Supporters have argued the measure is necessary because terrorists could use vital records to steal identities, according to a Congressional Research Service report on the law.

You know, the critical word in that paragraph is the word “could.” Yes, the terrorists “could” do all sorts of evil things. But to date they have only done one. We have a lot of checks and balances built into our society and our culture that we have forgotten about. Our federal government (and for some reason the institutional church is playing along with it), is strumming the fear that we all have since 9/11 to institute all sorts of bad laws.

Ninety-nine percent of our population is honest. We are hard-working. We love our neighbors, we love our country. Yes, there are a few bad apples amongst us. There are in any population. So what? So we come together and look out for one another. The protection against bad apples is not more laws that restrict the freedoms of us honest people. The way to protect ourselves is to know each other. It’s to smile at one another on the street. To talk and laugh together. Greet one another. Hold each other up. Be gracious and kind and understand that while we all have faults, we all want what’s best for our children and our grandchildren. Laws do not change hearts or morality, people do. The government doesn’t know best and we’ve forgotten that. It’s time to remember that we do know better and we know how to take care of ourselves and each other. Let’s get together and do it!


2 Responses  
  • Paddy O. writes:
    July 16th, 20064:11 pmat

    I very much agree. I have come to the conclusion that the great majority of laws we have these days is nothing more than an enforcement of the etiquette we seem to have lost as a culture. “Do the right thing” has been replaced by “get all you can”. Ambition has replaced honor.

    So, we make laws, which in times past would have been extraneous because people had respect for each other.

    Or maybe it was because there were so many less people and folks didn’t run into each other quite as much.

           
  • Ross writes:
    July 17th, 20064:06 pmat

    Great comment Paddy O,

    I would argue that in times past, people ran into one another more often than they do now (and the farther back in history you go, the more true that is). In the Colonial period, towns would “warn” settlers back into town if they tried to move too far outside of the community center… Not only did you depend on your neighbors for everything… food, security, etc., but etiquette served to guide the behavior of these newly rising groups (most Americans/Colonists were not landed gentry and used their freedom to “prove their worth” and advance up the social order.)

    Now days, “get all you can” is the guiding principle to advance up the social order, and that ethos rewards you when you exploit your neighbor for gain (as long as you don’t actually break a law that you can get caught in the act of).

    Ambition has indeed replaced honor.

           


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