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Last Updated: Jul 10, 2008 - 12:32:05 PM |
“The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.”
--C. K. Chesterton
I recently flew to Miami for a conference. You might be thinking that the conference was just an excuse to go to Miami for a weekend in February, and you would be right.
But the conference isn’t the story here; the drive to the airport is the story. I always listen to talk radio when I drive. I’m not sure why I do this; when I was a teenager I did what all teens do: I put on the loudest, most obnoxious music I could find I ROCKED whenever I drove anywhere.
But now that I’m older and have lost the majority of my hearing, I put on talk radio when I
drive. And on the drive to the airport for my trip to Miami, I was listening to a radio show host I’d never heard of, and he was talking about how to raise kids.
At one point the host asked, “How do we teach kids to be responsible adults?” After a little banter with his co-host, he announced this solution: “Through practice.”
He continued to explain that kids don’t learn to be responsible adults by their parents telling them about it, or by school programs centered on responsible behavior, or by people protecting them from making decisions. These can all help, but at the end of the day they learn to be responsible adults by making decisions – good and bad – and then learning from those decisions based on the consequences.
What a great concept, huh? Let kids make decisions, face the consequences, and then learn from them. If only we treated the ADULTS in our country this way!
I’ve written before about the New York City Council’s decision to ban trans fats in restaurant food. Did you know that they’ve also proposed to ban aluminum baseball bats, foie gras, fast-food restaurants in poor neighborhoods, and candy-flavored cigarettes?
Chicago, not to be outdone, has considered new rules that would require such things as ice cream trucks to not play “excessive music.” According to the Chicago Tribune, the city council “threatened to use their legislative might . . . require taxi drivers to wear crisp white shirts and matching pants and socks [and] require cigarette vendors to display photos of diseased lungs prominently.”
Even smaller cities and towns have gotten into the act. In Omaha, Nebraska, the city council has banned sledding on many popular hills, and ice skating and ice fishing on frozen ponds. In Colorado, bills are being considered that would ban loud music in cars and “alcohol vapor.”
“So what is the problem with any of this?” you might ask. “Don’t these rules make life better?”
That really depends on how we define “better.” Is a better life one where government forces our behavior? Is a better life one where we no longer can decide whether or not to participate in behaviors that might be detrimental, or even dangerous to us? Is a better life one where our choices are limited to what is safe, healthy, and government-approved?
I say no. I say not only is that a far worse life, but, paradoxically, a dangerous one.
Let’s consider the radio talk show host again and his advice for teaching kids to be responsible adults: through PRACTICE.
What happens when kids don’t get that practice? What happens when kids are pampered and protected during their adolescent years, shielded from making decisions and living with their decisions?
What happens to these kids when they are finally faced with the tough choices of life as adults? They BOMB, is what they do. They have no practice with the concept of action and consequence; it’s like they never grew up.
As a college student, and later as a college professor, I have seen these kids flunk out of college, I’ve seen them deal with unexpected pregnancies, and I’ve even seen them go to jail for illegal behavior.
When government takes away our decisions about what to eat, what to drink, whether or not to smoke, etc., and protects us from ourselves, it creates a nation of children, and that’s quickly what we’re becoming. We become like those pampered college students, and we have no ability to make decisions for ourselves – and that’s dangerous for a society.
I was amazed listening to the people interviewed after New York City’s ban on trans fats. Interviewers asked people if they thought the government had overstepped its bounds, and every one had nearly the same answer – something like this: “Yes, it probably did, but I’m glad. I need to eat healthier.”
I kept asking, “So why didn’t you pack your own lunch?” Are we really so pathetic that we can’t control our own eating habits? If that’s the case, we’re already far gone.
At least the people of New York City are. I’m not. I’ll decide for myself what to eat, what to drink, and how to live, thank you very much. And I’ll be happy to live with the consequences. Be they good or bad, I’ll know that they were of my own making.
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