Thursday, September 20, 2007 12:21 AM CDT
Column: U.S. has become land of sheep and home of the afraid
By HARRY REYNOLDS, Editorial page editor
hreynolds@jg-tc.com
Two obsessions grip Americans in this era. One is being safe. The second, not letting our children become adults.
Of course, there are exceptions, the major one, I suppose being the willingness of some parents to accept their children putting their lives on the line in the military.
And then there are those who accept the fact being alive isn’t safe. The possibility of unexpected demise daunts them not.
Legislators, from the state level to Congress, salivate at any chance to prove themselves champions of perpetual existence, constantly imposing new laws to insure everyone is mothered from the cradle to the grave — whether they want to be, or not.
All of this goes against the original grain of a nation erected on a foundation of danger, risk and the entrepreneur spirit. We carved out a country by joyfully not being safe.
There was nothing safe about being an early explorer tracing the wilderness, or a pioneer settling the land.
Risk was the byword and those were exciting — and often — deadly times. Opportunities for early demise held sway.
We went to the moon by not being safe. Astride what can be described as massive bombs posing as space crafts, astronauts went to that ball of stone, craters and dust, put down on its surface in flimsy little shuttles and took full measure of our nearest neighbor.
Aside from the very real possibility the delicate shuttles would crash into the moon, teeter and fall over (thanks to the moon’s ragged surface), was the graver possibility they would fail to launch from the moon, or fail to rendezvous with the mother ship.
What if — like a scene from a horror movie — the engine had failed to ignite? That thought was in the minds of billions of people on earth and a couple of astronauts each time we confronted the moon.
Challenging the stars merely the modern version of exploring the wilderness. Perhaps, it is the lack of real risk in these times that has installed such fear in our national psyche.
Despite the possibility of being gunned down; blown up; kidnapped; abducted; a house burglarized; a plane highjacked and plowed into a building, the odds of any of those things coming to fruition are miniscule.
But, you would never know it from the obsession of the news media, politicians, public officials, law enforcement agencies and those yearning to be terrified.
We need to get over this preoccupation with death. It’s coming, but why invite it to roam our minds unfettered.
I suppose one explanation resides in the fact we are continually exposed to fear — thanks to the pervasive intrusion of modern telecommunications. We are never free of the beast. It follows us everywhere.
Unrelenting fear may be one of the factors driving many parents to overzealous efforts to insure their offspring will never come face to face with anything remotely unsafe.
We can’t even send junior to college without trembling at the prospect of something unpleasant happening.
We fashion our high schools into incubators, not permitting our teenagers to assume real responsibility. And I don’t mean the kind mandated by educators.
From the start, children should be encouraged to be independent — even, a little defiant. Free thinking, unrestricted by unnecessary boundaries, should not only be accepted, it should be encouraged.
Hovering protectively over the young to the point of absurdity makes it less likely they will be able to face life on life’s terms.
In a sense, we are rapidly becoming a nation of people reluctant to grow up, to rage with nonconformity and accept nothing less.
Ultimately, neither the government nor our nurturers can protect us; we come into life bereft of any guarantee we’ll take a second breath.
But, these days, we virtually demand it.
We have arrived at the juncture where we willingly accept the proposition the government has some innate right to freely — and in an uncircumscribed manner — spy on citizens in the name of national security.
It’s interesting that some of the most vocal opponents of big government are also the most vocal proponents of government’s snooping and attempts to restrict the freedoms our forefathers laid before us.
We have come to the juncture where America has become the land of the sheep and the home of the afraid.
The world out there — or for that matter, here — is fraught with all the uncertainty and danger one should rationally anticipate in life.
It’s not a safe place. It never has been. And it never will.
There is a difference between fear and facing fear. One is a numbing creature; the other an inconvenience.
We need to cut the umbilical cord binding us to our fear; we need to spit in the face of uncertainty; defy those who threaten us; and live as if there is no death.
The alternative is to tremble every day until we meet the grave.
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Tom Andres wrote on Sep 20, 2007 9:38 AM: