Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
There is no limit to the power over others is contained in the phrase “for your own good.”
Gallons per flush and curly light bulbs, school lunches and eliminating kickball, unlimited immigration and minimum wage increases, bank bailouts and crop subsidies, gun bans, up-armored police and down-graded health insurance plans.
It’s the reason we had to destroy the village to save it: it was for their own good.
That’s going to become one of my new litmus tests. When someone proposes society require people to do something the people won’t voluntarily do for themselves, I’m going to ask why. If the answer is “it’s for their own good,” then regardless of the merits of the proposal, I’m against it.
Joe Doakes
A significant part of our society mixes up “government” and “parents”.
I don’t know if I can flesh this out in the minutes I have but,
Yesterday, a grand jury in NYC decided not to charge the police officer(s) involved in the death of Eric Garner. It’s in the news because it was a white cop(s) causing the death of an unarmed black man via a choke hold (that the NYC police banned years ago) in the course of arresting him.
The reason the cops were trying to arrest Eric Garner was because he was selling ‘looseys’ on the street. (‘Looseys’ for the non “streetwise” or persons who haven’t watched Dave Chappelle here in the audience of this small yet regionally prominent blog are individual cigarettes). NYC has many laws and many laws just with regard to the sale of tobacco. Garner did not have a license to sell tobacco. It is also illegal to sell tobacco in non-revenue stamped containers (like a pack). It is also illegal to sell Looseys. There is also (allegedly) the issue that the cigarettes Garner was selling were ‘bootlegged’ – eg: the city & state of New York had not received their tax revenues from these cigarettes because Garner had sourced them from out of the jurisdiction of the taxing authority.
Where this comment comes around to Joe Doakes story – The police who were attempting to apprehend Garner and effect an arrest were merely enforcing the laws regarding tobacco and the arrest, captured on cell phone, was violent. Garner resisted the police and refused to obey their commands and in the course of events died of a heart attack. In the aftermath of both Garners and Mike Browns death there was a lot of “no one should have to die for selling looseys” and “no one should have to die for stealing some cigarillos”. It is a coincidence that both of these deaths involved tobacco.
I have to wonder – with all the laws the Lib/Progs pass “for our own good”, how will they be enforced? Should people tell the police that the law doesn’t apply to them and that they will not be arrested as Garner is alledged to have said? Lib/Progs pass a lot of “yes, dear” legislation aimed to curb bad behaviors and never consider how that law will be enforced. Strong men with guns show up. The EPA has an armed undercover forces investigating fertilizer crimes in farm country. Is this what the Clean Water folks intended when they passed these laws?
A significant part of our society mixes up “government” and “parents”.
With good reason. All the children we (and maybe your parents if you’re young enough) had but never bothered to personally raise; the best daycare or preschool that money can buy is not an adequate substitute for even a marginally good parent, have grown to adulthood.
They are used to being part of a pack of the cared-for, getting group hugs and group lessons in right and wrong, and given little to no alone time to get bored with and problem-solve their way out of. Organized activities, play dates, team sports, all supervised and choreographed by some hired adult do not allow for the development of critical thinking and self initiated problem solving.
Consequently, our latest crop of young adults cannot be faulted for latching on to the first “authority figure” who crosses their path and tells the what to do, how to do it, and when. The need to understand the “why” of a direction has never been a big part of their raising.
When baby ducks do it it’s called imprinting. When young American adults do it it’s called the general public by some, and the uninformed voters by others … I doubt if this will change soon. The new 30-hour work week will really make two incomes per family a necessity, not just something to finance cruises and exorbitant college tuition …
One big difference between the government telling me to do things for my own good, and my parents doing the same, is that my parents were generally right. Can’t say as much about the government.
To wit, ham-handed enforcement of the law regarding….selling loose cigarettes for which the sales taxes have already been paid. OK, exactly who was being hurt so badly by this?
Who’s also hurt? Apparently Pontius Pilate De Blasio. He abruptly washed his hands of the tax collectors after they over-zealously enforced his mandate.
However, no matter how foolish the law that fueled the initial contact was, the use of deadly force (by MN law anyway) by the officer enforcing it cannot be attributed to it.
I wonder if the professional affronted will also demand a repeal of the “loosey law” as well as the many other alleged wrongs (some real, some not even close) they want abolished?