Archives
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Vitality
WHAT MATTERS NOW. I'm an impatient sort by nature. Metalkort hasn't had much time to respond to the question asked: How do you prove the obvious and should you even try? There's been one answer so far. Apotheosis said:
The vast majority of voting-age adults
will already have had more than
enough exposure to [the] post office, the DMV, and various other
government-run agencies to form their own opinions.
If those experiences weren't enough to make that necessarily negative impression, there's nothing you or I or anyone else can say that's going to convince them. Whatever proof we could provide is going to fly directly in the face of what they've already resigned themselves to accepting.
If those experiences weren't enough to make that necessarily negative impression, there's nothing you or I or anyone else can say that's going to convince them. Whatever proof we could provide is going to fly directly in the face of what they've already resigned themselves to accepting.
Which is pretty much what I thought. The so-called health care debate isn't really a debate. It's a gut check. Who are we as Americans, how do we conceive of our social contract with the government, and just how strong are we in the face of gray-suited bureaucrats who claim they know what's better for us than we do ourselves?
Let me rephrase that. Not a gut check. It's a life check. What's the point of being here at all? Is it to cower in fear of all the bad things that might happen to us and our own? And to expect continuous protection from all those things?
Or is it to, well, live? Live with the uniquely American risk of doing more for ourselves than any other people has expected of themselves and bask in both the fear and joy that accompanies the experience no other people has ever had. Human flight.
Buffalo Bill and Lindbergh and Mark Twain and Sam Houston and Neil Armstrong and, yes, Amelia Earhart, too, who did not come safely home. Sometimes we don't. Lincoln and King could tell you that if we could only ask them. But would they, if we asked, bleat for safety and circumscribed security above all other principles? I don't think so. I still think they'd trade everything for the chance to spread their wings and fly the American flight.
That's the only question Americans across the country have to ask themselves about this new drive toward government control of everything in their lives. Do they still want to be Americans? Or have they grown tired and anxious for succor in place of the chance for success?
The question goes double for the kids. Do you want to be a gradually expiring appendage to an i-Phone? Or do you want to live?
Your choice.
