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Let's face it. We Americans are becoming dumb and helpless drones. There's not much states, counties and towns can do without federal permission, oversight and threats. There's not much individuals and businesses can do without oversight from all of them. And to further tighten the regulatory chains that are inexorably choking off the last gasps of the independent spirit and individual initiative that built our country, we have a society full of self-righteous busybodies, inheritors of wealth they did not earn, devoting their lives to attacking and demagoguing countless habits, occupations and property rights of their fellow Americans.
And who are these folks who demand ever more programs funded by the public purse while simultaneously beating to death the goose that laid the golden egg? Are they contributing members of society producing the essential goods upon which their lifestyle is dependent? Are they producing more than they consume of the basic necessities that sustain life now and for the future?
Here's how one Internet writer who goes by the psuedonym 'Sartre' describes the U.S. work world today: "the indigenous (U.S.) economy consists of psuedo professions, superfluous services, government toadies and insatiable public parasites (free lunch)." Stop and think a bit. Consider how most people you know earn their living.
Two thirds of the American economy is now based on consumption. Consumption of what? Is it essential to life? My computer is a wonderful invention, but it is not essential to life. However, my garden and the food I buy at the grocery store ARE essential to life, as are the water from the earth and atmosphere, and the wood from the forests. America grew to greatness without the computer. Every city and school in America wants to brag about being a center of technology, but there is almost no discussion of the water, power, minerals and metals that make modern technology possible. Do children in school realize that the computers they take for granted require at least 50 different metals and minerals mined from the earth?
Environmentalist groups make heavy use of electrical power and Internet technology to tell how bad and destructive mines, power plants, ranchers and loggers are and how much water farms use. Their tactics have been so successful that mining has fled America and located in other countries. We import billions of dollars worth of wood from other countries while our own 'preserved' forests are eaten up by wildfires, disease and insects. Our food is increasingly coming from other countries. So, do teachers challenge their students about the ethics of the technology we love so much, the resource-using technology that we are transferring to other (developing) countries with few or no environmental protections? Do teachers encourage their students to challenge the hypocrisy of rich American environmentalists who use so extensively the products of mines, forests, cattle and farms....to oppose and shut down the production of American...mines, forests, cattle and farms?
Are we honest? Are we thoughtful? Are we preparing generations whose every need has been met from a retail shelf and whose power needs are supplied by flicking a switch, to understand real life and the necessary work on the earth that must precede their necessities and conveniences?
Do we want everything... as long as the dirty work doesn¹t take place in our backyard?
So, what important issues do we concern ourselves with in America? Well, let me see...one of the 'most important' things is a new industry of snitching on smokers in bars in Tempe where smoking has been outlawed.
Police have their work cut out for them. Never mind that the bars are private property and non smokers can choose not to go there. Never mind that it's not safe to walk on city streets after dark, and that Arizona tops the nation in number of real crimes that law enforcement seems powerless to prevent.
And then the federal government is going to do something about those dangerous SUVs, obviously one of the greatest threats facing Americans. And never mind that the federal government has made dangerous tin cans out of 'acceptable' modern cars.
All over America, 'grass-roots groups' are lobbying for more money for substance abuse, domestic violence, keeping developments out, pregnant teenage mothers, low-income groups, illegal immigrants, and a thousand other causes all accompanied by paid support groups. But they aren't risking their livelihood or offering their money. They want YOUR money and industries they have no qualms about obliterating. Go figure.
Intelligence and reason seems to be the most endangered qualities of all in our society.
In the Payson newspaper I read about a lady who has a big, scraggly juniper in her back yard that she wants to remove because it's obstructing her view of the Mogollon Rim (where thousands of trees are dying from overcrowding and disease but environmentalists want them left because they are 'natural.') The town fathers are going to consider her case because they have a law that no tree over 6 inches around may be cut without permission from the town. Never mind that it's on private property.
In Arizona, the federal government is issuing orders on improving performance in the schools and on taking care of the 83 percent of Arizona land that it claims to own. Never mind that the schools would probably do a lot better on their own without federal mandates and that primitive Indians did a better job of managing Southwestern forests than the federal government has done.
American workers, small businesses and communities are squeezed and squished and battered from never-ending regulations, taxes and the efforts of those in the 'psuedo professions' and 'superfluous services' demanding sustenance from the very essential production they say is damaging the environment.
So whose environment do the 'superfluous services' and 'psuedo professions' want to (impact) in order to ensure a continuous flow of the commodities and services they use prodigeously but never worked for?
Common sense logic, accountability and essential occupations are all disappearing from the American scene, beaten down by the voices of a modern elite who never did an 'essential' thing in their lives. So, what are we going to do about it?
Decades of groveling and 'meet, eat and retreat' by local officials and organizations have accomplished virtually nothing. There is a place for righteous anger and risk. And right now, as those from the 'psuedo professions' and 'superfluous services' continue to hold sway over federal and local governments, and rural communities are reduced to welfare lines, is the time to put the scuffed working boot of reality in their spoiled and sheltered backsides.
This country was not created by their like, but by brave men who were willing to take a stand and a risk. The frontiers from east to west were settled by individual risk-takers with initiative and strength. Today, by taking the most minor decisions out of individual hands and reserving the right to protect life, liberty and property to officials with 'credentials,' we have allowed and even promoted the emasculation of American manhood, the extinguishing of the most basic protective instincts of the human male species. No wonder we have gangs and drive by shootings and drug warfare, depression, suicides and substance abuse.
Our state and local governments are merely bodies held hostage to the carrot of federal funds, the fear of litigation....and their own perceived self-interest.
Our energy and potential is literally being crushed by an overload of meetings and paperwork, and an underload of positive results.
But we can change, and I hope we do. Soon. Starting with what needs to be done in the forests within our boundaries.
Payson.cc © 2003 Carrol Cox
Payson Arizona Editorial and Opinions on National USA / World / and Local News Issues