Why Do We Hate Our Freedoms?
Maybe the founders of this country got it wrong. Maybe people really don’t want freedom. Perhaps it’s just too damn much work to have to think for oneself instead of having someone else tell you what to do. They tried pretty damn hard, even put it down on paper, but we can’t seem to take these ideas at face value. They’re pretty simple too, designed to be applied regardless of the variable nature of time and government. But we just can’t help but search for ways to give up these rights, or take these rights away from people with whom we disagree.
Mike Daisey hosts a one man show who recently discovered what it’s really like to experience freedom of speech. Unfortunately for him, it came at his expense when, during a performance, a group of students from Norco High School staged a walkout. It was timed to occur immediately after one of his monologues that included profanity. Now these students were warned that there was profanity in the show, so I don’t understand why they felt it necessary to disrupt the show for other paying customers (except that they were trying to make a point), but I won’t argue that it was their right to walk out en masse (as long as their actions didn’t risk injury to other patrons, like crying “fire” in a crowded theater). Where they crossed the line was when one of their number walked up to where Mr. Daisey sat on stage and dumped his water on Mr. Daisey’s hand-written notes. These hand-written notes are the outlines for his shows and, therefore, the product of his hard work and labor. By dumping water on hand-written notes, the student crossed the line from protest to assault. Why wasn’t it enough to just walk out? You made your point and you didn’t cause damage. But by pulling that aggressive, juvenile stunt you turned what was some conservative-Christian protest into fodder for the media.
And speaking of Christian, when will these people understand that just because some of the founding fathers were Protestant and proud doesn’t mean that we all have to share in that belief. The very fact that they were wise enough to include religion in Amendment 1 means that they understood all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of religious tyranny. Many of us are of a faith different than Christianity and don’t believe that your way is the right or only way. We should be allowed the same respect as you, and the recent decision to allow Pentacles as part of a U.S. soldier’s gravestone is a step in the right direction. I’m not Wiccan, but I know many people who are and who seriously believe in their faith. Those soldiers who served our country and practiced Wicca are as deserving of a headstone representing their faith as Christians, Jew, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists. Christianity is not the “official religion” of our country, as is patently obvious when reviewing the Bill of Rights. And for anyone who complains that we’ll have every religion asking for representation, I suggest you have two options: 1) Get over it and allow it to happen as other religions are as valid as your own or 2) Remove all religious symbolism from state-sponsored headstones (which I don’t agree with despite my belief in the separation of church and state: in this case, the soldier sacrificed everything for our country and deserves the respect of a headstone as he/she would like it).
Finally the most controversial issue of this post: gun control. The 2nd Amendment clearly protects our right to keep and bear arms. This has been supported by the DOJ (see my older posts, I’m too lazy to link it again) as well as the fact that any close reading of the Bill of Rights supports the individual right argument. Those who believe it has something to do with the National Guard would do well to remember that the National Guard didn’t exist until hundreds of years after the founding of our nation. Regardless: we need to think logically and realistically. No matter what your opinion of firearms, the fact is they exist and will continue to do so; Pandora’s Box is open, so to speak. We need to stop defining ourselves as passive victims. I can’t say it any better than Mark Steyn of the Chicago Sun-Times in his article, “Let’s be realistic about reality“.
We need to resist, as a people, the urge to give in to the “easy” and “safe” so-called “solutions”, as they rarely solve anything and often end up with us giving up our rights in favor of the nanny-state. The founders of this country entrusted us with a great burden, one which has made this country great: freedom. We need to accept the responsibility that comes with freedom and work to find ways to bridge our differences and live up to the goals set for us by our founders. Let us not elect Presidents as though they were Kings, let us not be lulled into idiocy by mass media and let us never allow ourselves to adopt the victim mentality so many other countries would have us adopt. Let us be free.
