My Country Shame on Thee

The main thing I’ve gained (well, the money’s a close second…) since moving over to Germany is actually a bit sad. What I’ve gained is a rather vivid understanding of how America has pretty much lost its way…

Now don’t get me wrong here – there is no other place that I would rather live than America; however I’ve been starting to think that the only reason for this is the language issue. You see, communication is extremely important and the only place that I feel comfortable with my communication skills is America – and that’s purely due to the fact that I was raised there. I do not have a firm enough grasp on any foreign language to be able to successfully express myself (and let’s face it – I’m not willing to put in the effort to change this). The result, of course, is that I need to live in the states. This doesn’t mean that I need to be happy with what America seems to be turning into and I believe it’s about time somebody started speaking up. “We the people” need to really take a good look at what’s going on…

I got a comment from Sherry on my How Not to Behave on Christmas post about drug testing that reminded me of one of our nation’s issues – as a nation, we’ve become way too willing to let societal norms be mandated by others. It seems that the individual has lost control of what is most important – his own life. I’m sure that many of you out there will disagree with me; however I really don’t care what somebody does on their own time as long as it doesn’t have a negative impact on others. And by “others” here I am referring to people unassociated with the action that this person has decided to partake in – the “innocents”.

It seems to me that way too many laws are being passed these days that are designed to limit an individual’s rights in an attempt to force that individual to “fly straight”. That’s great but shouldn’t it be up to the individual to discover his own flight path? I mean just because certain citizens believe that there are some practices that are considered unacceptable behavior doesn’t – at least to me – mean that all of these practices need to be outlawed. Perhaps certain aspects need to be reigned in (you can drink alcohol all you want, but driving under the influence is a punishable offense) but to completely outlaw a behavior just because some people are going to do stupid things is not what I would call “freedom”. In fact it is an excellent example of pure subjugation and living in “the land of the subjugable” doesn’t have quite the same enticement as living in “the land of the free”.

Now granted I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my life (and if you’ve been reading my blog this should be clearly evident); however I have always taken responsibility for any actions I have taken. I’ve been lucky enough (at least so far) to avoid any consequences that would ruin my life; however I have “rolled the dice” a few times and I am well aware that many of those dice rolls were imbecilic. The thing is that “freedom” gives me the option to take these chances – it leaves the decision up to me. If you want to live in a free society, you need to understand that it comes at a cost. I think the cost is that you need to be willing to allow others to decide for themselves how their lives should be lived. Sometimes, bad decisions are made – that’s just human nature…

I don’t know… It seems to me that what seems to be in limited supply these days is respect. Whenever a freedom is abolished it is because somebody took advantage of this freedom to disrespect others. The junkie that made the decision (and a “decision” is what it was) to abandon society in order to live out his life in some sort of chemically induced euphoria shows absolute disrespect to anybody that was relying on him to continue to be able to properly function in society. Is this the fault of whatever drug this individual has let himself become a slave to? Nope. The fault falls completely on the individual. As far as I know, no drug exists that is capable of auto-ingestion. Does the fact that some people are stupid enough to abuse these drugs mean that the drugs, themselves, should be outlawed? I believe not…

Okay, before I turn this post into an argument for drug legalization (that was just an example), let me get back to my main topics of freedom and the American image. For most Americans “America” and “Land of the Free” are synonymous. That’s what we’re taught in school and few of us ever even question the correlation. The question that one needs to now contemplate is – as long as we sit back and continue to watch our freedoms slowly get revoked – how long will it take for these terms to become unrelated? The rest of the world already seems to be taking notice of this and it really is doing quite a bit of damage to the American image on the global stage.

The saddest part is that this revocation of our rights has actually become political ammunition and for all the wrong reasons. I mean how the hell did homosexual marriage become an issue? I mean who cares? So a couple of guys decide to get married? Is this going to be the end of the world? Umm, nope. All it’s going to do is create one more family. Perhaps you don’t agree (based on your own subjective definition as to what actually constitutes a “family”), but should this stop them from having the freedom to get married? Oh well, I suppose they could always move to some other country that allows same-sex marriage (the Netherlands, perhaps…) or live in one of the states that allow it (Massachusetts or Canada – but I tease…); but if they happen to live in one of the other 49 states I guess they just don’t get that freedom.

And we, as Americans, should be completely ashamed of ourselves for what we have let air travel to, from and within the United States become. Although all the silly little rules that the TSA has forced people to live by has done very little (somewhere on the order of nothing) to help protect us (check this out…), they sure have weakened the image of us throughout the world. I mean we basically threw out the fourth amendment for nothing more than paranoia. I mean how are we supposed to be viewed as the “Land of the Free” when we are so quick to dismiss a portion of the Bill of Rights out of paranoia?

I’ll admit that I don’t have any simple solution for getting America, once again, focused on what’s really important – letting freedom ring (although impeaching Bush seems like a good start…). I hope, however, that this silly little blog entry has maybe gotten you to look at this from a different perspective. Who knows, maybe sometime in the future being an American might once again become something to be proud of whilst traveling abroad … we can only hope…

bis später,

Coriolis