A post by Maynard
John McCain drew applause when he said to The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials: “We must also understand that 12 million people are here, and they are here illegally, and they are God’s children.”
As Tammy pointed out, the word “children” conveys an image of helpless innocence. Which of course isn’t the case; illegal immigrants have made an adult decision to enter the country illegally. To call them “children” is deceptive and condescending.
Meanwhile, FoxNews is reporting: “Drug Dealers Going Free Under San Francisco Sanctuary Law“. Thank you, San Francisco supervisors. Your tax dollars at work, with a little help from God’s children.
It’s not just illegals that our legislators regard as children. California’s new law against cell phone handsets in cars kicked in today, and the police are writing $100 tickets as fast as they can. Now we’re all criminals. But we’re a different type of criminal, in that we have no sanctuary cities to protect us and no civil rights organizations to sue on our behalf. We’re on our own.
This is just another facet of creeping authoritarian micromanagement. The police have been stopping cars when the occupants aren’t wearing seatbelts for years now. This became law in a two-step process: First they could only cite your seatbelt violation as a secondary offence, but they couldn’t stop you for it. Then they bumped the priority and made seatbelt violations worthy of a stop. (This has been a special annoyance to me (Maynard). Due to an odd quirk in my car, it appears from the outside that I’m not wearing a seatbelt, even though I am. I’ve been pulled off the freeway (which is a dangerous move!) twice for this.)
Seatbelts are good, and cell phones are an annoyance. But a seatbelt check isn’t a job for the police. It’s a job for your mommy. When our lawmakers act like mommies, they chip away at the mindset that we’re a nation of adults, making adult decisions for our own lives, and accepting the consequences of those decisions. The more we’re treated like children, the more we become like children.
Health care adds another justification for government control over private decisions. If the government is going to give us “free” health care, then they can reasonably command us to live our lives according to their guidelines. This is another reason I dread the growth of government “help”.
So we’re all treated like children, but some children are more equal than others. There are two classes of children: The pampered children and the punished children. The pampered children are the ones that the government goes the extra mile to protect, such as those drug dealers in San Francisco. The punished children are the working people that find their lives being micromanaged and harassed.
Like our local lawmakers, the Left-leaning SCOTUS crowd tilts in favor of child rapists and terrorists (i.e., pampered children) while voting to deprive ordinary Americans of their fundamental right to self-defense (punished children). The pattern is clear and troubling.
In my ideal world (“the United States of Maynard”), children are treated like children, and adults are treated like adults, and criminals are treated like criminals. The United States of America, it seems, is becoming less and less like that.
When seatbelts were first made mandatory, I got strange looks when I said it was an insidious law and a harbinger of more government coercion. There’s no argument against the idea that each of us should look after our health and safety. The argument for having a law was that wearing a seatbelt is a societal obligation because getting injured or killed in an accident has societal repercussions. Such an argument had to be made otherwise the government has no pretext for making you do anything. Conditioning people to the concept that trivial personal behavior may be controlled for the greater good was what worried me. Conceding that the government may intervene coercively, to literally strap us down, on the premise our personal health and safety are societal obligations set us on a dangerous road. We’re well down that road and a seatbelt isn’t going to help when the crash comes.
The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.
. . . but, BUT they’re only making these laws for our own good! (*cough*)
I don’t enjoy being treated like a child, but even MORE infuriating is being treated like a stupid child.
Life is dangerous… fraught with peril. Getting out of bed in the morning can be dangerous, then again staying in bed can be bad for your health too. What’s an average citizen to do? I bet even the government can’t make enough laws to keep us all safe all the time. But then that isn’t their real goal, is it? Liberals want us all to be victims, powerless minions. But why, for the love of Mike, would even the hopelessly dependent want to put the people who gave us “The War on Poverty” and the “War on Drugs”, not to mention “Social Security” in charge of micromanaging what’s left of their *lives*? We’re like the frog in the pot of water being slowly brought to a boil! Anyone else notice that it’s getting hot in here!?
Sad and frightening!
Tammy, I just want to thank you. You are amazing and an inspiration to me. I have just recently picked up your book “Death of…” and have felt an overwhelming sense of relief as I realized I was not alone in my utter disbelief of what our generation is turning out. There is hope yet!
so focused on peeling away our rights to live as and how we wish- the corner stone of any real democracy-they are blatantly defaulting on the primary and only real purpose of government- to” establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility,[and] provide for the common defense”. how safe our we when often violent gang bangers and drug dealers are free not because they are citizens but really because they are not? an actual american citizen would most likely be thrown in jail- particularly, oh p/c san fran, if they are a poor, black actual american. illegal alien criminals, because of their coloring and countries of origin, are absolved from prosecution/deportation because of their criminality.crime thus affords rights because, it would seem, the bill of rights are only for criminals and law breakers and any particular religious or ethnic group deemed more worthy then actual legal citizens to have them. it’s absurd. is this country and it’s elected officials stupid, suicidal, or insane?
Pat_S – thanks for that link. Very interesting.
However, some of it seems kind of silly. I mean, since I was raised in the 1970s and 1980s, what kind of music am I supposed to listen to in order to be considered a grown-up? Frankly, I like almost all kinds, including the “oldies”. The fact that I like the music of my youth (which is still rock ‘n roll) more than the music nowadays (which sounds more and more like whining and caterwauling and I don’t know what rap and hip/hop is but I never liked it) means that I might still be “juvenile”? I don’t know about that.
Plus, my husband and I still like the typical “blockbuster” movies that come out like Star Wars, Star Trek, Transformers, Spider-Man, etc. I’ve tried to watch more “high-brow” stuff, but I’m usually bored to death (No Country for Old Men? More like a cure for insomnia.). I mean, not all the time. I do like anything Jane Austen if it’s done well and similar things like that.
But I also enjoyed the Shrek movies, Disney movies (Wall-E for instance was wonderful), Kung-Fu Panda (hilarious!). I’m not ashamed to say my sense of humor is “goofy” so I can usually stand to watch Ace Ventura, although some of the newer spoof movies are just nothing but garbage. Nothing like Airplane, anything Mel Brooks (except for that last Dracula one – ech!), etc.
My husband and I also still have fun going to Disneyland (without the kids) and even Six Flags (although some of the rides are not meant for people my age [36]. Sad, but true! I get such a headache!).
So, a lot of it I agreed with, especially about dressing and certain other attitudes that leave us still thinking like children (the constant need of help from the government). But some of it, not so much.
Are the only grown-ups the ones that reject all rock n’ roll music and only listen to stuff up to the 1940s (and maybe some of the 1950s)? The ones that won’t go to Disneyland without their kids?
There is a certain amount of “child-like” I like to maintain because I find many people in my parents’ generation (and they are NOT boomers, but that unnamed generation that came before – born before 1946) to be a little “stuffy”.
I think that we can still enjoy some things that we did as youth (movies, music, even video games) and still be grown-ups. Some people will be extreme and not grow-up, but others, like my husband and I, I think, fair quite well. I am certainly not on my way to becoming my children’s best friend.
Anyway, it was a thought provoking interview and I might just buy the book!