With the proper framing, one can easily be led by emotion to irresponsible conclusions. A prime example would be the opportunistic abuse of a mass shooting which took over the news media recently. Rather than understanding what happened and dealing with that, certain groups and politicians have stolen the incident and tailored it to their needs. Before facts were known, they made up their own. Before motivations were known, they made up their own. Unfortunately, many members of the public, to blind and weak to form their own opinions, have glommed on to the agendized version of the story and formed knee jerk opinions.
Sadly, many of these people are unaware of the direction the country would take should their knee jerk reactions become policy. The generations before them knew what it was like to live in a country without freedom. Much blood has been shed by those that built this country in order to create the freedom that we have been born into. This seems to have created an environment where freedom is owed, not preserved. Our generations are burning through our remaining freedom like a trust fund kid that never had to earn his/her keep.
Not only have we allowed freedom to erode, but we've done it in the name of expedience. We pretend that packing people into cities like cattle (without opportunity) and increasing the headcount exponentially is somehow only a problem because guns exist. We have media that reports every time a crime is committed with a firearm, but never when a crime is stopped with one. We have an anti-firearm indoctrination that says the 2nd amendment was about muskets and hunting rather than preserving the foundation of our country (that the people tell the government what to do, not that the government tells the people what to do).
On the surface, this seems like a mixture of laziness (the government will do it for me) and the indoctrination that we are owed (the government has to take care of me). The 4th amendment has been eviscerated by Bush and Obama with the Patriot Act (which oddly has nothing to do with anything patriotic. Presumably this was named "patriot" in an effort to make people ignore the fact that it directly violates the 4th amendment.) Freedom is fading. We havn't had to earn it. We havn't stood up when politicians attack the core of our country. We have been lazy. We have become the herd of cattle of which the government has assumed ownership.
Something as simple as this blog is possible only because of the 1st Amendment. At the rate of which we are losing freedom and control of our Democratic Republic, how long will we even have that? We are so busy fighting over which letter is better (D or R) that we run in circles while DR railroads us with stupid legislation. The best thing that could happen to our government would be denying them any authority not specifically allowed in the Constitution. Imagine if our legislator were required to DO THEIR JOBS as provided by the laws of our country instead of making up new laws to the contrary?
Imagine waking up and finding the average citizen is done letting the media use emotional stories to shape their opinions. Imagine a country of critical thinkers that can see through the BS of Washington. There needs to be a national dialog. We need to "Demand A Plan". Of course, this dialog and resulting plan should be directed at preventing politicians from destroying freedom in exchange for campaign contributions.
Posts
