Few things subject to outside control

Few things subject to outside control

(My Clovis News Journal column for February 13, 2015)

Life is like an ice cream parlor, except instead of 21 flavors, the choices are nearly infinite.

Or, they would be if others would stop demanding you choose only from the limited options they decided to allow you; ignoring all other possibilities.

You are told you may only choose between vanilla and chocolate. Of course, the reality is that it's closer to a choice between vanilla made by two different companies, rather than between flavors which actually differ in any substantive way. Whichever flavor wins the majority vote becomes exclusive for the next few years- if outvoted you can't have your preference at all. Not even in the privacy of your own home.

That's your option. Any other choice is off the table. You'll wait years before being offered a chance to enjoy your favorite again. Then, you might lose once more and be forced to forgo your preference even longer. Or become an outlaw.

How can anyone think this is normal?

Don't ignore the real variety. Your choice between two flavors- between Republicrat and Demolican- only matters because people have been fooled into believing it's OK to allow the winners to dictate things no one can have the right or authority to control.

There are extremely few things in your life legitimately subject to outside control. Even then, the only ethical type of outside control is self defense. If you attack or steal, your victim is right to use force to stop you. If you smoke something someone else doesn't approve of, no matter who he is, he has no right or authority to send government employees after you. If he chooses to do so anyway, he becomes the bad guy, as do those he sends to act on his behalf.

That's just one among countless examples I could list.

That he has a "majority" behind him makes no difference whatsoever. Doing wrong isn't made right through popularity, or "laws". Nor because "it has always been done this way".

Unbelievable as it may seem, it gets even worse. If your fondest hopes come to pass and Vanilla wins the next election, the coercion imposed by Chocolate will not go away. Instead Vanilla will add his own rules to those imposed by the Chocolate regime before him, which were added to hundreds of years of made-up rules; negating your choices, taking your property, and pushing you around as it suits the whim of those who impose the rules.

You probably defend this behavior because you have been schooled to see this as the way things are supposed to be. You have been trained to see this as normal. Break free.

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