It
doesn't matter if I agree with Ayn Rand, the new Star Wars franchise,
or an actor whose face I don't know. What's disturbing is that these
social media affectionados believe that opinions need to line up with
theirs or else be censored. Also disturbing is how many young people
express that the Bill of Rights should be altered to exclude certain
of those rights. Statistics and documentation may be available to
some, but right now, I simply want to express opinions that have been
formed over decades of observation, contemplation and meditation.
Our
country was founded on laws and the belief that individuals have the
right to think and do as they see fit. It was also based on a strong
moral code that directs actions, but allows people to make their own
mistakes. In general, the government did not punish moral mistakes.
Even in Hawthorne's The
Scarlet Letter,
it seemed that the punishments were not legal as much as societal
and/or religious.
Reader's
Digest used to have a feature known as "There Outta Be a Law".
It listed moral infractions by entities with power. Guess what? Forty
or fifty years later, we now have a law for everything and no one is
happy about it! Laws to restrain immorality seldom work. Instead of
stopping the offending behavior, the offenders simply try new
tactics. These "moral" laws have unintended consequences,
and otherwise innocent people have become oppressed. For instance, a
1970 law meant to punish drug lords now takes money and property from
families. Just do an Internet search on "asset forfeiture"
and see what you find. There are far more stories than Google lists,
because they filter the returns. (Ignorance is bliss, and keeps the
masses quiet.) While I committed no crime, I lost property to the
government. An attorney told me that it would cost close to a
thousand dollars to sue to get it back, and that there were no
guarantees that I would. In my distressed and destitute condition, I
let it slide and thanked God that I wasn't charged with a crime for
being a simple bystander.
We
now have an incredible fight between legal gun owners and those who
think that getting rid of guns gets rid of crime. Hmm. There
certainly was no crime before guns were invented! There was no sin,
no war, no evil at all! If only gunpowder had been confined to
fireworks! Then all would have been sunshine and roses!
Guns,
however, were invented, and Cain shot Abel. Wait! You mean that guns
were not invented right out of the Garden of Eden? Well, certainly
Brutus shot Caesar! No? Didn't Mongol hordes sweep across Asia with
repeating rifles, or Vikings terrorize Europe with sub-machine guns?
Guns
are not the problem, people. The hearts and minds of humans are. We
have to guard our thoughts. We have to guard our own thoughts,
because no one can do it for us. We have to be able to think for
ourselves. We have to be taught right from wrong and make our
individual decisions based a proven moral code. Old knowledge is not
lame knowledge. We have not evolved into creatures that don't need a
moral compass. Everything said has been said before. Everything done
has been done before. Humans are no different today than they were
thousands of years ago. Only the names have been changed to
perpetuate the myth of progress.
Is
there no hope? No trend is irreversible. In fact, all life runs in
cycles, (or circles). Humanity is approaching winter, when
everything looks dead and dying. Spring follows winter. People try to
say that if we never had this or that event, that we would be
enjoying a Star Trek like paradise. This is foolishness. The world
never settles for peace. Remember the 'peace dividend' that we were
supposed to have after the Berlin Wall fell? It turned into the first
Gulf War. Material prosperity leads to discontent. It will get
better, and it will get worse, and then better and worse again and
again until time stops.
This
is why we need the free exchange of differing ideas. And guns. Guns
provide the tool that allows the weak to be able to defend against
the strong. Instead of worrying and/or yelling, enjoy whatever
true, honest,
just, pure, lovely, good, or virtuous things you find. Keep them in
your mind, and let others think their own thoughts.
That's true freedom.
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