This is NOT a country...
Yesterday I was watching the 2-hour "Extreme Makeover- Home Edition", and it was for a marine who saved some people on September 11th. He loved being a Marine, and it showed all over; he was a nice, honorable, family guy. He happened to mention that he would "die for this country", and it got me thinking:
We don't live in a country.
We live in an IDEA.
This isn't a country like England, France, or China- The U.S. is an IDEA that has boundaries.
The IDEA is that the INDIVIDUAL has worth; In China, the philosophy is that the individual is there to serve the government, and whatever is good for the government is good for the individual.
Our IDEA is the opposite; Our idea is that the government is here to serve the individual. Our IDEA is that the individual can do what he or she wants, whenever they want, and with whom. We protect personal property, we spend millions to save one life, and we assume innocence before guilt.
Our IDEA supports that humanity is GOOD.
The IDEA supports that ALL of humanity is good.
I think there are many of us who are forgetting the IDEA, and who are moving more and more towards a "commonwealth" philosophy, and it made me think of this quote:
"People who say 'you should do for others' are mostly planning on being an 'other'"
And our IDEA is OPPOSITE of that.
We don't always live up to the IDEA of the U.S., but we're trying, and YES-
I think that's an IDEA worth dying for.
I have to disagree with you a bit here. We are NOT free to do WHATEVER we want, with whomever we want.(are you condoning incest?) We are not free to do what is morally wrong (like take advantage of someone else for personal gain), nor are we free to trample on someone else's rights, for personal gain. I don't think that this IDEA is a black/white proposition. There are many shades of grey here, and we need to watch for the slippery slope that it puts us on.
ReplyDeleteYou may have misunderstood what I said:
ReplyDeleteThe "individual" also includes whatever victims there are. So, we PROTECT individuals too.
we don't trample on rights- BECAUSE WE HAVE THEM TO BEGIN WITH.
Many other countries DO NOT have such a thing as individual rights.
That's the point
ok, but here's that grey area that I was talking about:
ReplyDeleteto protect the individual, one of the things that the government does for instance, is create safety guidelines. For example- gas emissions, and/or safety belts. Now these guidlines must be enforced as rules or laws, right? So, the goverment then enacts these laws, for the safety of its people. But BUSINESS does not like these laws, because it puts on extra costs to their products. So, they are not free.
I do agree with you wholeheartedly that many countries do not have individual rights, but I'm saying that they cannot be absolute, and sometimes the government must do things for the good of the people because Business, left to its own devices, would not. (where profit is the ONLY driving force)