During my trip into work in the morning, I usually watch a movie on iPod. My movie du jour is that of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (I try to expose myself to both sides of the spectrum, the left wing commies and the right wing zealots, as they say "know thine enemy"). Aside from the fact that I, as a red blooded American, detest Moore as a person, I was struck as to how he actually WANTS a enormously powerful, Big Brother sort of centralized government and I feel this kind of idea is turning into a political movement today.
If we look at the tactics he uses we can see how he feels about American gun ownership. He demonizes the Michigan Militia (militia kicked the British out of here, remember?), he makes fun of Charleton Heston to his face for owning loaded firearms, highlights a bank's free gun program, and shames K Mart into ceasing to sell ammunition. Now, while I'm all for Moore being able to say what he wants, I am just baffled as to how our society has come full circle and we are now producing people like this that are just bashing the freedoms that were the battle cry of the late 1700s.
The whole point of the American Revolution was to allow every American citizen the freedom to live their lives the way they saw fit. They can own guns if they want, they can drink themselves stupid, they can build a fallout shelter in their backyard if they want. The beauty of this country (or at least it was at one point) was that every individual chose how to live their own life and that was all there was to it. The government didn't tell you what you could or could not do, where you could or could not do it, or insist on you paying for another citizen's health care. You make stupid choices with your life, you had to live with it and the government wouldn't bail your moronic ass out.
Sorry, I got side tracked, back to Moore. So, now, instead of having the government tell us that gun ownership should be restricted, we have actual American citizens shouting the same message as their government. This is what really scares me. This shows an inherent trust of the federal government (remember that one of the tenets of the American nation was that of a weaker central government with the real power residing with the states). So as a nation that grew out of anti-government unrest we now have returned to giving up own personal freedoms and we're happy about it (whoever works PR for the US government should be paid really well).
This situation is downright scary. Its not that the government is insisting on us giving up our freedoms that is scary (I'm used to that from Bush/Cheney) but the the fact that we, the citizens, are insisting the government take them from us! The American public is more-or-less saying "I would much rather have government make my decisions for me than have to be responsible for my own choices". I understand that making big ticket decisions can be hard, but do you really want politicians and bureaucrats in DC making those choices for you? Who knows your situation better, you or them? People are just uneasy about having to live with the results if they choose poorly. Well..... that's part of life, get over it.
The solution to this problem of ignorance of the American citizenry? I don't know but what I do know is that the first thing that has to go is this trust most people have for the US government (no, I'm not some crack pot that is going to pull an Oklahoma City but the point remains, how do we get rid of this unearned trust?).
Our relationship to the US government is like this: you have a wife and she convinces you to move overseas to make more money for you and her, then when you're there she keeps insisting on more and more and more money and won't take no for an answer, you divorce her and the legal battle lasts for years, you stay overseas and meet someone else. Are you going to rush into another marriage and give all your money away again? Of course not, so why are we doing just that here?
Parting thought: Do you want to have to pay for the medical care of Michael Moore?
Neither do I, I don't have enough money to cover that many bypass surgeries.
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