At what point will Americans stop being complacent about government intrusion in our lives and start waking up? Or have we hit the point where we are simply too complacent and there’s no turning back? Have we reached a point where, collectively, we believe our “leaders” our wiser than us and so we assume the actions they propose and implement must be for our own good?
After all, we have long been complacent – those in today’s generation have been conditioned by government schools. And from the time we started earning our first paycheck, we are led to a promise that government is already looking out for us with a great retirement plan known as Social Security. What a great word – security – to make us feel so comfortable. And instead of being upset that we have lost control over making our own decisions, instead we are rather comfortable.
We are comfortable with the idea that politicians know best for us when it comes to not only our retirement program, but also our health insurance, and a whole host of other decisions we entrust in their hands. We are comfortable that the decisions of so many across so many thousands of miles in distinct families, neighborhoods, work places, and communities, are not put in the hands of the people who know those places best, but rather in the hands of a very powerful small elite who wisely watches over us (mostly from afar) and have become our benevolent caretakers. With this comfort that we are being taken care of, we keep sliding into further complacency. Year after year, election cycle after election cycle, no matter whether it is Democrats or Republicans, we allow those powerful elites to make decisions for us, as if they know best.
This is a Republic, and I’d have it no other way than to engage in a system of representative government where there are checks and balances – not only between the various branches of government (legislative, executive, judicial) but also between various levels of government (local, state, and federal). But the moment where we start allowing those in power to make decisions that go beyond what we should be able to responsibly control ourselves, we start sliding further into complacency, giving up not only personal liberty, but also personal decision-making powers over things that occur in our daily lives. And then the ultimate checker of power – we the people – no longer has the same level of power (or even will) to “check” the other powers back.
This week, the free press (who was arguably in the tank for President Obama during his elections), learned they aren’t so free under this administration. In fact, it was revealed this week that the Department of Justice had been obtaining phone records from reporters with the Associated Press. At what point will their anger subside? Perhaps this President just has to wait out this latest scandal. If he survives this one, all the rest are easy.
Also in this past week, we learned that individuals and groups who opposed this Presidents politically were targeted for further scrutiny by the IRS. This latest infringement is so outrageous that even Jon Stewart of The Daily Show carried a 7-minute segment on the scandal.
And over the past few weeks, we’ve also been learning more about the tragedy that happened on September 11, 2012 at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi (that’s in Libya for those of you who have been living too comfortable to even know about this controversy). That attack happened on an historic day – the 11th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. While it was happening, our military personnel asked for backup and were given none. Four Americans died, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
After the attack, the State Department (then led by Hillary Clinton) tried to cover up the entire incident and tried to shift attention to a YouTube video (that warned of radical Islam) and claimed that video “instigated” the attack. This has been proven to be ridiculously false. The reason for the cover up is becoming clearer each day – the Obama Administration was less than 2 months before a very close election and wanted to shift attention away from the incident. Through Congressional testimony and investigations over the past week, we are beginning to learn more, but the media (and the American people) are very comfortable and complacent and have not yet shown very much widespread outrage about this.
And then…then, there’s the drones. A few Americans were awakened to this invasion of our privacy in the wake of a filibuster by U.S. Senator Rand Paul. But then we want on with our business.
There’s also that $16.8 trillion national debt. But after everything else described above, that seems so trivial now, doesn’t it?
So, what will it take for the American people to wake up? If there is ever a time, it is now. The freedom of the press is at risk. The free association of groups to mobilize politically is at stake. And the very men and women who put on that uniform each day to defend our right to free speech, free press, and yes, even our freedom to defend ourselves with the right to bear arms, cannot even trust those in charge of sending them into harm’s way.
My hope is that after you read this article, you will not just go back to watching the NBA Playoffs, American Idol, or playing Words With Friend. (Probably just lost a few there). Instead, I hope you will do something. Call or write your Congressman. Get involved with a group that promotes liberty. Attend a town hall meeting. Get off the couch, do something, and defend that liberty we each take for granted. If not, our comfort will drift into something else less comfortable. There are plenty of examples in history where the comforts of materialism drifted into a society that turned less free. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”