I’ve noticed a trend lately. It seems as though everyone is trying to tell me how to live.
Animal rights groups don’t want me to wear fur or eat meat or go hunting or fishing
Greenies don’t want me to drive a car.
Unions want to me to become a member so they can take my dues and support candidates I don’t agree with.
Islamists want me to convert to a religion I don’t believe in.
Charlie Sheen wants me to think he’s normal.
(I just threw that last one in there. Who’dathunk that Two and a Half Men was a documentary?)
I understand the strong urge, when one discovers a new lifestyle choice, to share it with their friends. I really do. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You want to be a vegetarian? That’s wonderful. Oh, you’re a pacifist now? Splendid. You’ve suddenly become aware of this or that cause and now want to tell the world about it? More power to you.
Umm, guys (and gals), I don’t need you to tell me what to do, or what to think, or how to spend my money, or what to teach my kids, or do any of the other things that you seem to think I need to do.
I’ve got this.
There also seems to be a trend within this trend: all of these folks who’ve gathered together for what they see as the Betterment of Mankind are on the political left. Somehow they don’t seem content to let me live as I see fit. Their growing numbers enable them to raise money for political contributions to candidates that agree with them. Once these candidates reach office, they start to push for legislation to elevate their cause into law, thereby forcing their beliefs on the rest of us.
Take the environmentalists (please). For generations, these folks have been convinced that we’re somehow doing irreparable damage to the Earth by going about our daily lives. That by going to work and caring for our families every day, we’re a pox on the planet and must be stopped. That by taking what we find and making it into something that helps to make our lives easier, we’re somehow the enemy. By their thinking, businesses are evil, profit is the Devil’s lucre and anyone who works for them is a little Hitler, raping Gaia for their own selfish gain. How do we sleep at night?
You don’t have to think for long about how difficult it would be to live without all our modern creature comforts: all you need to do is read a book to find out how it used to be. We’ve managed to do a pretty good job of beating back disease and famine to take our rightful place at the top of the food chain.
And that is somehow wrong? And being born in America makes me evil?
Granted, we were pretty sloppy once upon a time. But we’ve managed to clean up our act quite a bit since the Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969. You’d think that environmentalists would be happy that we’ve gotten a lot more responsible and that they’d declare “Mission Accomplished.” You’d be wrong.
Instead, these groups have infiltrated government and now tell us that we can’t even use incandescent light bulbs. In fact, the EPA has more power to pass more regulations than ever and looks to enact even more. This is a major reason why we don’t drill for our own oil in the face of rising gasoline prices, we don’t construct new nuclear power plants or build new refineries. We even have a hard time building new roads and bridges due to lawsuits brought by environmental groups.
Our own president even said that under his Cap-and-Trade plan, our energy bills would “necessarily skyrocket.” And that helps us how, Mr. President? Sir, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not all rich.
A proper balance seems increasingly hard to reach. And with more pushy people comes more peer pressure to conform to what they think is the right way to live instead of what we know in our own hearts.
You can look at life any way you want. But with that freedom comes the responsibility to make damn good and sure you see things as they are, not as someone else sees them. You see, power makes folks think things that aren’t true and see things that aren’t there. Just listen to these groups scream that anyone who disagrees with them is full of hate. That’s now how adults operate.
But then again, we’re not dealing with adults, are we?
There’s a big difference between someone who wants to throw their weight around and someone who wants to accomplish a worthwhile goal that benefits everyone.
It's the difference between harvesting grapes and peeling them. Although, it makes for a cute tune...
1 comment:
Sir,
You are incorrect in asserting that those who wish to better mankind are on the left. The citizens of the United States have a rich and long history of supporting and advancing the notion that there is a standard that all must follow. Take Prohibition, for example. I cant imagine that anybody would ascribe the tenets of that failed proposition to Progressives, as they would have then been identified. The conservative and reactionary positions of the criminals who profited from Prohibition notwithstanding, the idea found its roots in notions of divinely inspired instruction, given, naturally, to those who were endowed with a special ability to understand Him. A more current example is to be found in the assertion, by Senator Michele Bachmann, that gay marriage is the single most important issue in America today. Unfortunately, Mdme. has failed to appreciate the significant threat posed by followers of Allah against the United States. And that is just the beginning, as our century-long slide to collectivism continues unabated, and helped along, one might add, by the unfocused Senator Bachmann. We are indeed a nation of busybodies, and our wayward path will be recognized too late, alas, when the triviality and busy-ness leads us into the sorry and sodden abyss.
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