(Because no matter how much you would like to forget it, it’s almost November.)
This was originally written for school (I got to write it instead of a written narration, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything to write a written narration about…)
Law suits, perhaps, (to me, anyway), are something of a joke. Maybe it’s because one of my brothers is under the mistaken impression that you can win lots of money from them. He often suggests that we should sue various people (Microsoft, Nintendo, and the like) whenever he thinks a problem can be conveniently blamed on them.
People expect the government to look after them. They sue others in the hope that they can find a way to bend the benevolent law around to their point of view and have the government exact revenge upon their enemies. They complain, always seeking something new, something that will pander to their own interests while at the same time pandering to a million other people. They jump on board with the latest revolutionary bandwagon, because it’s new and its loud and, hey, everyone else is doing it to, so it must be right, right?
We have become fascinated with the idea that government is all powerful. The government is our savior. It fixes all the problems, or sweeps them away under the carpet where they will be forgotten. It is our great god and we are its slaves, toiling away so that we can hand over our share of cash to Uncle Sam and ensure that we keep breathing to work another day.
I’m not a cynic. Or at least I try not to be. But November is coming up and I’m seeing those ‘Remember to Vote!’ things online, and it got me thinking about our crazy mess of a government. Well, maybe the wisdom of The Roots of American Order had something to do with it too, but okay.
The first part of the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence states that the purpose of government is to secure our rights, which, famously, are those of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Did you get that? The whole point of government is not to enslave us, as some would say, or to make sure that we have a good education, or even to make sure that we are moderately happy. The government’s sole purpose is to protect our rights, our autonomy, to make sure that we are allowed to live and breathe and read and write snarky blog posts or whatever.
But we have taken this protection way too far. We have sacrificed our responsibility in favor of the whims of the too-powerful men, who, in our desire to find something to protect us and love us and make sure we’re all right, we have made gods in courts of law.
So much for ‘separation of church and state’. Somehow, they’ve become one and the same thing.