Freedom, its a word that is flung around rather often these days, but how many of us realize what it really means? During my lifetime, at 42 years, which is relatively short, I have seen the gradual loss of many of my freedoms. As a child, I can remember eating ice cream while riding in the back of my dad’s pickup truck; something that today would get any parent a hefty fine at best. Other laws have slowly infiltrated our society; all of them implemented with the best of intentions… We’ve seen seatbelt laws, smoking laws, leash laws, litter laws, boating regulations, animal ordinances, etc. Face it, there’s no argument over the fact that we need laws… Let’s use smoking as an example of what happens when you pass a law that seems good. Everyone knows that smoking is bad; it is a proven fact that it causes cancer. Government has placed a heavy tax on cigarettes to discourage smoking; how is that money used? Laws have been implemented to prohibit smoking in restaurants; sounds good unless you are the restaurant owner whose main clientel are smokers. Wouldn’t it be better to just require that a sign be posted, saying, “this is a smoking establishment”? If you didn’t want to smoke then you wouldn’t eat there. I don’t smoke, but I have to sympathize with those who do. As long as they aren’t hurting others, what right does anyone have to dictate how they live their lives? Life comes with risk from day one… From that point forward, we have no guarantees as to what will happen to us. Shouldn’t we get to live our life the way we want to live it? With every law that is passed, even those that would benefit the majority of citizens, someone is losing a measure of freedom. When one looks at this in a broad scope and considers not just laws but bureaucracy, they have to realize that we have lost much of the freedom that we once had. Most of that time, bureaucracy comes with licenses and registration fees to pay for it. How much could be saved if there wasn’t so much bureaucracy to begin with? Anyone reading this, has probably thought of  The Department of Motor Vehicles, as they are reading… What a nightmare it is to deal with that bureaucracy.

Anyhow, the purpose of this post was just to provoke some thought, on laws, and their impact on our lives. So many laws are passed with such little thought on the cumulative effect on such laws on our lives. Much more attention should be given to laws that would seek to protect the majority rather than laws that would serve only to punish the few; the end result simply is, the erosion of our individual liberties.

Over the last century, our country, and countries across the globe, have made fantastic strides in providing infrastructure. Roads are built by governments; safe potable water is distributed in just about every town across America; refuse is collected and deposited in consolidated landfills; communication is transmitted instantly, worldwide, and electricity is delivered to every household in a modern civilization. This has provided a great deal of comfort in our daily lives.

Without so much as a thought, we can flip a switch, and turn on a light in a dark room, operate this fancy computer I get to use on a daily basis, and charge up the ipod, and all manner of portable appliances we have become dependent upon in our daily lives. When we are thirsty, or need to wash our clothes, the turn of a faucet handle will provide a seemingly unending supply of fresh water, and almost if by magic, the things we find no longer useful in our lives, can be put in the trash bin to go off to who knows where … but it isn’t here, and that is the important part … or is it?

When I began considering the massive integration and collective cooperation we have as a society, the geek in me began to see subtle flaws in its implementation; then the more I dwelt on the issue, the more important these flaws became, until I can no longer take anything for granted; danger, grave danger, lies everywhere, and we as a society are blind to its inherent flaws. Sure, I like a nice hot shower, probably more than most folks; to get that shower though, I have to rely upon lots of other people; people I don’t know, to do things that quite frankly, I don’t understand. The public works people maintain the public water supply, and actually keep the city’s waterline in proper working order; send off water samples for tests, treat waste water, and scope out new well sites among the vast number of other things they are required to do, to actually get water out of the ground, or reservoir, and out to the populous. The electrical workers have to maintain not only the power generation plant, but they also have to install and maintain tens of thousands of miles of high power electrical lines to get the power out to the customer. Power generation facilities across the continent are connected in very complex and highly volatile network, and require tens of thousands of people, on a daily basis, just to keep it working. Our trash is collected and consolidated into huge holes in the ground, designed to hide the excess of our ways. In essence, we just live our daily lives and use these things without a thought about any problem or potential problem that might exist in the system … and that is a very dangerous situation to be in.

Last week when the news broke, about the earthquake in Haiti, we were complacent … oh, another earthquake in a place most of us had never given a second thought to … but when the gravity of the disaster began to become real for us (thanks Anderson Cooper), we realized that this was much more than your run of the mill earthquake; if there even is such a thing. No, this was much worse, this was the complete collapse of an entire society of people; an entire country is in turmoil, and despair is the nicest thing they have going for them. This was devastation like we have never seen before. Outside of collapsed schools, homes, businesses, and government buildings, were throngs of people, hundreds of thousands of people, displaced. There are perhaps, 2 million people or more, whose daily lives are affected to a degree that we can barely fathom, yet here we sit oblivious to the dangers our own highly integrated society has built for itself; oblivious to the havoc we would face if we were to have our own infrastructure-quake.

Consider that you are reading this, likely on a computer, powered by electricity, generated by a power plant, that runs on uranium, coal, oil or gas. What happens when there is a failure at a power plant? Can’t happen? Think again … across this country, there have been numerous catastrophic plant failures, explosions at solar power facilities, core leaks at nuclear plants, massive turbine failures, collapse of steam pipes, and wind and ice damage to transmission lines … and that was only in the last couple of years. It doesn’t seem that bad though, particularly if you were not one of those affected, without power for weeks on end. As any computer expert would tell you, in order to have a secure and reliable system, you must have redundancy … lots of redundancy. Look at how NASA works … there are redundancy protocols, for redundant systems, for redundant protocols, for backup systems, for backup systems… and yet they still have a track record of having catastrophic, irrecoverable, problems.

That hot shower we take for granted, would be of little concern for those who rely upon a public water source, were that source to become contaminated or unavailable. Consider that, in a town my size, as many as 50,000 people could be left without so much as drinking water, much less bathing water, if a single system goes down. The idea that bigger is better, and consolidation for the common good, is of little concern if you are thirsty.

What we can learn here, is that, smaller, more localized handling of the needs of people will provide a much better solution than massive projects to provide for the masses. Multiple, neighborhood water supplies, will ensure that, in the event of a single failure, the least number of people are affected. If one or more wells stop functioning, there may be a lower capacity of the remaining supplies, but the lower supply is a better alternative than no supply. Electricity generation is another very similar situation… If we have more plants, much smaller than the gazillion megawatt plants of today, spread out in more communities, with shorter transmission distances, the failure of one in a huge network, will be much less problematic than the failure of a single plant providing power to an entire quadrant of the country.

The whole point is, when you put all of your proverbial eggs into a single basket, no matter how big and strong that basket might be, there is a flaw in that basket, a flaw you don’t see … and grandma knew that… thats why she always carried two baskets to the hen house, and why she went twice a day. If one of the baskets failed, she didn’t lose all of the eggs. As a populace, it would do us well to remember that … we need to have many baskets in order to have the least collateral damage in the event one fails. If you learn nothing from the plight of the Haitians, learn this one thing … almost always, a little something is better than no something … and right now, the basket that contained the Haitian infrastructure, has been dropped to the ground by an earthquake nobody predicted.

Well, here we are, one year to the day, of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. And as many of us predicted, because of The President’s liberal policies, and failure to adjust to a country that, by in large, is a center to right country, the president appears to be losing a lot of political capital, and is increasingly losing the support of the people.

In my opinion, it is sad, because the president seems to (usually) be a likable man, who clearly is very smart, and a very good orator; however, these attributes are only one part of the equation, and can not, and will not, be permitted to trump our fiscal, and national security. It is yet to be seen, if the president will get more in step with the citizens of The United States.

Please listen to Bill O’Reilly’s analysis… I believe he is spot on!

–

–

Recently I had an unusual experience. It intrigued me so much that I had to write about it and lately, as evidenced by my lack of blogging activity, I just haven’t been inspired to write about much. Perhaps that is the writers block that causes some consternation among many fellow writers. But I’ll give it a try and see if I can still muster enough fortitude to put together a thoughtful post.

I am a member of or have been a member of many different organizations in the last 25 years or so. Most of the time they are specific cause charities, for example boys clubs or scouts. For the purpose of this entry, I’ll not identify the organization I am writing about because I really do believe in their cause, and wouldn’t want the people involved to become pawns in yet another political debate.

I wasn’t the first nor the last to enter the board room as the meeting was getting underway. As is customary, the opening ceremony was completed and the course of business had gotten underway. When it came to new business, it was posited that considering the substantial devastation in Haiti and the fact that aide organizations across the world are clamoring for funds to get supplies and people on the ground there to help, it would be nice if we too would contribute to the cause. On the face it seemed like a great idea, although our annual budget is pretty low, we could put together a care package of $250, it might not be much, but it would certainly help. If more people did it, then the dollars add up pretty quickly.

Now spending money is something that I enjoy. I also really like helping people, regardless of their situation, I call it my compassionate guilt complex. When I am able and sometimes when I am not, I give of my time and money to help others. This is a weakness that I have, but I am willing to bear because of the joy that I get from knowing I was able to help someone in need. But this was different. This was money from an organization that had come together for a specific purpose, whose charter laid out the rules of conduct and whose members agreed to abide by that charter.

In many ways it is very similar to our federal government and our own system of laws. To draw a complete comparison, we can liken the Constitution to the club charter, the President would be the board chair, and the Congress would be the board members, finally the citizens of this country would be akin to our club members.

The ‘President’ called the question … after the requisite motion and second as required, ‘Congress’ entered into debate over this bill. The sentiment was unanimous. The people in Haiti are having a really tough time of it and we have the desire to help them. Considering there wasn’t alot of real discussion going on, I asked a simple question. “Mr President, does our constitution allow for us to spend money on the people in Haiti?”. The ‘President’ was honestly shocked by the question, and after a couple of minutes simply stated that it did not. So I followed up with “If our constitution doesn’t allow for us to do this, why are we even entertaining this bill?” The resounding, almost unison response from the ‘Congress’ was “Its the right thing to do to help these people. We can and we must!” … now if that sounds like a mandate, it surely did to me … its the right thing to do, we can do it, so we must do it … At this point there was much bickering and arguing back and forth between those who saw that the truth is, regardless of whether we want to do it, it is neither right nor can we just do it. As an organization bound by laws and rules, we must abide by those or risk losing the confidence in the citizens that elected us to our position. When the final vote was cast, the bill failed by a 1 vote margin.

Clearly this wasn’t our government in action, but it was a really close approximation in the private world, however the reaction was right on par with what one might see from the citizens who desperately wanted to see this bill pass. Immediately I began receiving comments about how I must hate the people in Haiti or how can I ignore their plight. These sentiments, while on the surface seemed to be correct, they were far from the truth. Regardless of how many times I said I had nothing against them and really wanted to help them but my hands were tied, as it would have been against our charter to authorize such an expenditure, they would have no part of it.

Finally, I made a comment that would cease the discussions and quieted the naysayers. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a $50 bill and laid it on the table. Of course it was already earmarked for gas, but I needed to make a point. I told the entire committee that I was donating $50 toward the recovery efforts in Haiti right then and there, and I would gladly accept any personal donations from the members of the board, up to a total of $250. After a few seconds of shock, the murmuring quieted down and I instructed the members to see me after the meeting so we could coordinate our $250 donation. Amazingly, but not unexpectedly, there was not one person who took up my offer to fund a private initiative.

Sure it was OK as long as it was someone else’s money they were giving away, but the end result was that I made my point. People feign compassion when it makes them look good, they feign conservatism when it makes them look good … in fact people generally do whatever they can to make themselves look good, except, and this is a big one, except when it requires that they actually do the deed.

So what does this teach us? If you are really concerned about people, don’t be a fake conservative, don’t let your compassion go awry and by all means, don’t fall for the rhetoric about certain things being the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to live within the constraints of our laws and rules, and if you don’t like them, work to change them.

Regardless if I agree, or disagree with Ted, I do believe, The Constitution should be followed to the letter! I don’t believe, anyone should be able to buy a gun at anytime, without “some sort of background check,” but I totally believe, people have the right to bear arms, and defend their loved ones.

I totally share Ted’s frustrations with these dam Progressives! Today, in this country, our government, in the name of regulation, is trying to control too many aspects of the people’s lives; while reading terrorists their rights, and court-marshaling our Navy Seals. It is truly insane!

I love Ted’s straightforwardness, articulation, and passion, on The Second Amendment…

–

–

President Obama, on the campaign trail, and in his own words, promising “potential voters” that the national health care debate would be in the open, and broadcasted for the whole country to see…
–