|
| The Global Freedom Institute |
| Social Order: The killing of Individual Freedoms in America (page 4) The same goes for owners and their animals. Recently, there have been cases of charging owners of dogs with assault or similar charges for their dogs attacking others. First, this assumes that an owner can control their dog fully. No owner fully controls their animal. They may think they do, and they may have very nice pets, however, if a dog or other animal choose to attack someone, the owner would have little control over it directly. Especially in some of these cases where the owner was not even present and the dog escaped the yard. This seems like a stretch of the law. While the owner may be open to civil suit for the animal, it should not be a criminal offense to have a dog get out and feel threatened and attack someone. Dogs get out of yards, it happens all the time. It is little more than an attempt to control the types of dogs that people own. Another method of keeping people feeling unsafe and reliant upon the government. Thus creating social order based on government. The list goes on and on. No one seems to know for sure, or is willing to admit, when this shift seemed to occur. Odds are good it occurred quite gradually. However, it is quite obvious that government is using fear and manipulation tactics in order to tilt the balance even further to the side of social order over individual freedoms. The idea that individuals can be free and live near each other in society without government telling them how to live seems to have eluded many in society. People seem to have become so afraid of society that they almost want government to be there for them. And it doesn�t matter if you are a democrat or republican, the reality seems to be the same. Republicans have long wanted harsher penalties and more crimes to maintain social order. There was a time when democrats were seen as soft on crime and republicans where the hard on crime people. The irony here is that the republicans are the party that claims to want limited government to protect freedoms from governmental control. Democrats have responded and become tougher on crime, though they weren�t against too many laws in the first place. Amazingly, it seems that crime has become much lower than it previously has been. However, one could find justifiable doubt in the impact of the crime policies as much as the impact of a good economy on crime. When people have money and jobs, they often don�t need to commit crimes or have more to lose, thus committing less crime. The question becomes will Americans ever come back to shift the momentum back to individual freedoms and responsible actions of individuals? It seems that the mentality of blame rather than responsibility has taken over America. Watch California for an example. When the economy suffers, blame Affirmative Action. When budgets are too high, blame immigrants. Blame, blame, blame, rather than look at the truth and one�s own responsibility. What happened to the days of personal striving for success rather than blaming others? During the 90�s, one could find a white male blaming affirmative action for their failures to get a job around seemingly every corner. Or that same white male blaming immigrants for taking jobs away from them�as though that person would consider working in the fields or as a busboy, where most illegal immigrants work. It is the blame game. It is by no means confined to white or male America. Until Americans begin to take control of their lives and responsibility for their actions, individual freedoms will continue to be unnecessarily lost. Why should a parent be held responsible for the mistakes of their child under the law? There was a day when that parent would insist upon paying for a broken window their child hit with a baseball and then make the child work the money off in the form of household chores. And if the family was poor, they would work out a deal for the child to work off the cost of the window with the residents of the home. What happened to those days that laws have to be passed like this? Has the idea of supporting your child become so misguided that it means telling them it is okay to break windows or kill someone? The �we support you whatever you do� mentality may have gotten out of hand. This is just a symptom of the problem though. Americans have lost sight of what freedom means. They tell themselves, �America has the most freedom on Earth, so it must be true freedom.� This logic, however, is flawed. It assumes that just because there are more freedoms here than elsewhere, we have true freedom. To follow this logic, would Hitler�s Germany or Stalin�s Russia have been true freedom, if it had the most freedom on Earth at the time? Of course, not. America has lost sight of true freedom. It has caved in to what the founding fathers fought to avoid. Social order has taken over for individual freedoms. Political rhetoric has replaced truth. Power has taken over the people. Will that change? That is the million dollar question that has kept America�s freedoms limited for some time now. --GFI 2/8/01 1 2 3 4 Back to Main Page |
|
|