When we talk about passing laws that regulate and control we need to ask ourselves a question: “What if the next president was Adolf Hitler.” When we have government officials in office that we agree with and trust and we pass a law, we assume it will be administered with care and good will. Thus, if we legislated putting these mentally ill people back into institutions we would assume that it would work out as we intended. But what if...
We already hear about doctors asking questions about our attitudes toward guns. It hasn’t happened to me, but I hear about it. We recently had the kids at school do a survey. It was never in my hands. It was administered by an outside agency. I never saw the questions. Afterwards the kids told me it asked a lot of very personal, invasive questions. Under the wrong people questions like this can be used to decide that you or I are mentally unstable and need to be locked up for our own good.
Or how about home schoolers. These people are the target of the fascists in government. If you remove a child from the brainwashing of public education the concern is that they might learn to think for themselves and develop contrary views. One recent case is “Texas Judge keeps family apart for two months over homeschooling.” The key quote to me is,
“While the Tutts were not accused of abuse or neglect, officials objecting to their decision to home-school their children removed their children from the home.”It was not abuse. It was simply a matter of being out of the mainstream.
We need to take the long term view on things that we would like to see made into law. What if the wrong person is applying them? I think we should assume it will be the wrong people, not hope it isn’t.
I suggest that no law is better than bad law.
homo unius libri
Whenever I hear of a proposed law that is "for the good of the people" or "for the children" or "to keep us safe," I know that we are in trouble should it be signed into law. Those who are happy to be cared for from cradle to grave by a nanny government don't care as long as they get more free stuff. Those of us who are responsible adults capable of taking care of ourselves and our families, should be very afraid of more laws designed to control us.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you read Michael Crichton's book "State of Fear." His thesis was that the elites have always tried to have some great fear to keep the masses needing them. It used to be the communists. Now it is the environment. It starts in school with all the fear tactics they present about pollution and poverty. Of course the government is the solution instead of the problem.
DeleteI lean more Libertarian every day.
Grace and peace.