We are free; only to be dumb. All other freedoms are being slowly whittled away by governments who want to save the people or people who want to save the globe.
The tragedy is that we are willingly donning clanking chains without the whisper of a struggle. One pressure group barters away a bit of everyone’s freedom for some advantage to their ‘minority’. little realising that someone else is doing the same thing with their freedom for some other benefit. Before we know it everyone would have lost their freedom and gained nothing of significance. The only beneficiary would be the government, getting fatter, heavier, and more asphyxiating.
Remember the tale of the two cats that fought over the sharing of a single roti? They go to a monkey to resolve their dispute. The simian promises to divide the roti into two equal parts. He deliberately makes one part slightly larger and puts the two pieces in a balance. Saying one is heavier, he bites off a mouthful to make them equal. Now the other piece is bigger. So the monkey takes a bite of that one. And the balancing act goes on till there is no roti and two very hungry cats. Left to fend for themselves, the cats could have split the roti reasonably, if not perfectly. The government is that cunning, all-consuming monkey. You should only give it peanuts; not the national pie to distribute.
The more power we let such do-gooders usurp the less efficacious the nation becomes as a whole, irrespective of class, community, geography; across all human activity, arts, industry, agriculture. This usurpation starts surreptitiously and righteously. First the interference in private affairs with affirmative action to set right a perceived unfairness. Then a remedial action for the unfairness you created with the first action. Then the remedy itself becomes the excuse for another insidious interference. Slowly every thing falls apart, except the ever tightening chains. How can we stop this chain-reaction?
By not saying, “The government should do something,” every time a problem rears it’s head. More often than not, the government should NOT do something. Because behind that rearing head of most problems is the expanding rump of the government.
By saying, “No thanks,” to government help. In business, in education, in food fiddling (sorry, security), in employment creation. It’s debilitating at best and toxic at worst.
By saying clearly, “You have a mandate to run the machinery, not our lives.” When the government botches up the simple tasks it was entrusted with — safe roads, property protection, life security, speedy trials — how can it overreach itself by assuming control of a billion personal lives? Like controlling what they pay, what they eat, what they sell their produce for, what they see, what they read — and fatally — what they think.
Finally, let’s not play dumb anymore.
Gangaraju Gunnam 