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| Rob's Soapbox | ||
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Congratulations!
You have finally landed on the one page on this entire site (and on the entire internet for that matter) that is purely without bullshit... my soapbox page. There are a lot of times during our show that, whether it's because of time constraints and other obligations, I don't always get to address some issues that I feel don't get the attention they deserve. There are even more times when I just don't feel like waiting until the show the next day to get some things off my chest. Thus, I have started the "Rob's Soapbox" page. If you have clicked on this page looking for someone to coddle your fragile sense of self-esteem, or tell you what you want to hear or to reinforce your outdated world view, then exit this page right now and go somewhere else. If you are in search of the last forum for reason and common sense left in the world, then sit back, relax, and enjoy. I make only one promise with this soapbox page... if you read long enough and often enough, you will eventually be offended. So here's my latest soapbox. Listen up, 'cause you just might learn something... |
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Monday, March 31st, 2008 THE HIGH COST OF PARANOIA For years, I have been railing against overprotective, paranoid, hysterical parents who idiotically refuse to allow their children to grow up, live their own lives and make their own mistakes. For some reason, parenting in America has become an epidemic made up of coddling and prevention, completely ignorant to the fact that kids of all ages need to hurt, fail and make stupid choices so that they can learn from those failures and become mature, respected, productive members of society when they become adults. What began as “political correctness,” in the form of silliness such as trophies for everyone and no scores being kept during soccer games so that no child’s feelings would be hurt, has morphed in the last two decades. As the media has become more pervasive and hysterical, American parents have come to (wrongly) believe that there is a pedophile around every corner and have, as a result, endorsed more and more surveillance in the name of video cameras on public streets. Additionally, parents have taken their coddling to scary levels by literally trying to prevent their own children from experiencing some of the truly necessary (albeit stupid) parts of growing up. Who amongst us didn’t make silly, stupid and sometimes dangerous decisions while growing up? This is the very point of the phrase “growing up.” One cannot grow without making mistakes and learning from them. While it is true that along the way, a few youths occasionally make fatal decisions, it is not viable or reasonable to believe that we can stop such tragedies from occurring. Alas, common sense such as this is lost on American parents who have been endorsing such practices as using GPS systems to track every move their child makes when away from home. Some parents use them as homing devices, others as ways of believing they know what their kid is doing when they aren’t there to actually watch over them. The latter of these two is usually done by using the GPS system in concert with a car manufacturer and/or insurance company to report to the parent where a teenager drove a car, how fast they drove it, when they did so, and on and on it goes. I really, truthfully gave up arguing the common sense of this debate long ago. Arguing facts, logic and reason with hysterical people is fruitless and frustrating. If you really believe that you can protect your child by treating him like a prisoner on parole, then that poor kid doesn’t stand a chance in hell to begin with and my time is wasted. It saddens me that so many people forget that all of us spent countless hours of youthful joy making dopey decisions behind our parents’ backs. In most cases, those decisions were relatively harmless and vital to our human nature need for a “release.” In some cases, we got away with risky behaviors and in other examples we got caught and reprimanded later. In any event, all of it, including being given the independence to make bad choices, was vital to becoming our own, actualized person. Never mind all of that, though. When this asinine practice of coddling and obsessively observing every move our kids made began decades ago, scores of people blessed with common sense screamed aloud at the dangerous precedent being set. Rather than listening to us, those of you who are the timid, meek and scared amongst us shot back hollow clichés like “It’s for the children,” and “what’s the harm,” or my personal favorite, “oh, you’re just overreacting and over-thinking.” While I am sickened by the disgusting intrusion into my personal life and the continued erosion of civil rights that the slippery slope has led us to, I must admit that I do take a small amount of personal joy and satisfaction in being proven right, yet again. Let’s be frank, shall we? I gave up on the United States of America returning to its roots as a shining beacon of liberty and freedom long ago. This nation has been adrift for nearly 5 decades now, lead by an ever growing group of cowardly, naïve behavior controllers who blame America for all of the Earth’s problems and have no desire to defend what this nation was founded upon. At this point, I view this country as little more than a spectator sport; it’s not a question of whether or not we have destroyed what the founding fathers created, it’s a question of when it will all actually fall apart and whether or not I’ll be alive to see the bitter end. America is filled with hand-wringers who don’t think things through and it wouldn’t matter if they did, because they are too ignorant to understand the ramifications of their own stupidity. I often point out that all decisions, all choices and all options contain and come with consequences. This is an irrefutable truth of the universe that cannot be argued with. Whether it is as simple as choosing which path to take to work, or whether or not to get married, every single decision you make in life contains consequences. All of life is a balancing act. When you choose to get married, you hopefully gain elements of love, companionship and stability but inevitably lose at least a little independence, privacy and perhaps some financial stability. As the process of American parents over protecting their children continued to grow and explode, many of us cautioned against the ultimate effect of creating the same chilling types of intrusion and surveillance upon all of the country as was being created upon our teenagers. We were told that it “would never happen,” and that we were being “alarmists.” What we knew at the time and the rest of you didn’t want to acknowledge was that there is no such thing as restraint when it comes to behavior control and personal rights violations. If the argument can be made that teenagers need to be placed under surveillance when they are out of sight because their behavior often leads to irresponsible choices, then that same argument can be made about ALL people, because unless I missed something, crimes and mistakes are made and committed by all people of all walks of life all the time. If the argument can be made that, for example, using GPS technology to punish a teenager after the fact for taking the car somewhere he wasn’t supposed to take it at too high a rate of speed lowers the incidents in which teenagers make such bad decisions and commit such crimes, then that same argument can be made about ALL of us, because unless I missed something, there isn’t an honest person amongst us who hasn’t at least occasionally pushed the speedometer over 55 or knowingly made an illegal turn. Welcome to America, circa 2008, where insurance companies, law enforcement agencies, car manufacturers and politicians are coalescing around the notion that we should now use the technology that we have to watch, monitor, track and punish retroactively, the questionable decisions that American adults make. Emboldened by a nation of scared parents who have wrongfully argued that the ability to think they know what their kids are doing at all times has somehow made their children safer, these groups have decided that the same train of thought must apply to all of us and are moving forward with legislations, mandates, regulations and laws which will prevent us all from ever speeding, making illegal u-turns, driving off road, or even, potentially, ultimately, leave work early. After all, in a nation where we are willingly handing over all of our rights to privacy, it is not only conceivable, but logical, to assume that we will ultimately allow (or be forced to allow) our employers to track our every moves as part of the privilege to work. Driving, after all, is a privilege, and we have abdicated all of our rights to privacy and discretion while driving under the guise of protecting the public good, so the same theory must and will apply to such things as employment. Or perhaps, I am just being an alarmist…yet again. http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourCar/WillYourCarRatYouOut.aspx ------------ |
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