I once heard someone say
"Sacrifice means giving up something good, to achieve something great."
Americans love to talk about freedom, but I wonder if many Americans even understand what freedom really is.
It is virtually impossible to get anything done without some brainwashed zealot screaming about their FREEDOM.
Having lunch with a buddy of mine, who works for the FBI, shortly after the Aurora, Colorado Bat Man shooting, I asked him
"This guy bought $1200 worth of ammo for automatic weapons online. How did you let that slip under the radar?"
He said "We should have caught it, but we caught this one."
With that he showed me a news story where the FBI busted a man who was planning on shooting up the premier of the new Twilight movie.
Yet people cry about the idea that the FBI could be monitoring their internet usage.
THAT is a freedom I am willing to give up if it means we can stop psychos from killing our children.
Let the FBI see the porn I wank to.
It's really not that exciting.
Let them monitor my Facebooking.
Seriously they will be bored to tears.
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING MONITORED AND BEING OPPRESSED.
We have the technology to prevent senseless crime before it even occurs if we implement it properly and we should not let the paranoid rantings of a minority of people spreading propaganda keep us from living in safety.
We all have to be willing to make sacrifices for the greater good.
What if it was your wife who was murdered?
Your husband?
Your child?
Shot to death while watching a movie or walking down the street.
Would that change your mind?
The FREEDOM word gets thrown around when people talk about guns as well.
Hey I'm all for it.
If you want a gun, have one, but register it and pass a psychological and criminal background check.
That way I know the guns are getting into the hands of the good guys and not psychos and criminals.
But the mere mention of a reasonable measure such as this has people hollering about their FREEDOM.
Leading me to believe that most people do not even know what freedom means.
"Do you mean that every American should have the right to own a firearm?"
"Hell yeah!" they say
"So every American should be allowed to own a musket? As this was the most powerful firearm when The Second Amendment was drafted?"
"Times have changed. Now we need more advanced guns. The criminals have them. We need them."
"So every American should be allowed to own a rocket launcher? A tank? A suitcase nuke?"
"Well that's ridiculous." they say, but where do they draw the line?
The truth is that they DO NOT KNOW what is right.
Their views are arbitrary.
But they are loud and well funded.
What they lack in education they make up for in volume.
They will not be silent and neither should we.
Compassionate, intelligent people must always be vigilant.
We must not lose out to paranoid people who believe they must stockpile an arsenal to battle our own government.
That is insane thinking.
If the government really wants you in an internment camp, your M16 is NOT going to help you, pal.
They will open, flash and clear your house so fast that you will be incarcerated before you wake up.
The fact is that our government doesn't want us in concentration camps, as crazy right wing talk show hosts would have us believe.
They want us shopping, spending money and stimulating the economy.
Freedom doesn't mean "I can do what I want whenever I want and others have to deal with the consequences."
Freedom doesn't mean I can drive a hummer and let my kids deal with the consequences to the environment.
Freedom doesn't mean I can shop at a store who uses sweat shop labor and treats it's employees like shit so I can save a few pennies at the expense of the happiness of others.
Freedom doesn't mean I can throw 1 million pieces of Styrofoam and plastic into the ground and expect someone else to deal with it.
Freedom means we all work together and make sacrifices so that we can go from having a good country to having the best country.
Freedom isn't about what's best for ME.
Freedom is about what's best for EVERYONE.
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