Rock-paper-scissors

We've all heard the proper technique of how to boil a live frog. If you just throw a live frog into boiling water, it will hop out immediately. However, if you put the frog in cool water, then turn up the heat, it will remain in the pot until it is boiling.
It appears the water is far past temperate and we Americans are in the pot. I am referring to our national and state governments.

For at least the past three administrations, and no doubt many more, our elected officials have purposefully ignored our Constitution, on which this country was founded. The U.S. government has enacted bills that infringe on our rights and trample the Constitution. Since we are a constitutional republic (not a democracy), this action should be repugnant to every American, and especially to every American that has defended the freedoms of this republic. Yet, instead, we seem to be very apathetic and indifferent as though the lump under our chin had just been described as a benign tumor.

In their 1999 book, How Now Shall We Live, Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey describes the unwinding of our western culture with insights from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. “Orwell warned of a communist government that would ban books; Huxley warned of a Western government that wouldn’t need to ban them—because no one would read serious books anymore. Orwell predicted a society deprived of information by government censors; Huxley predicted a society oversaturated by information from electronic media—until people lost the ability to analyze what they saw and heard. Huxley feared a system where people stopped caring about the truth and cared only about being entertained. Orwell described a world where people were controlled by inflicting pain; Huxley imagined a world where people were controlled by inflicting pleasure.” Perhaps there was a bit of truth in what both these men envisioned. Today, it appears the cost of liberty takes too much energy to maintain. After all, we have the “American Dream” to achieve, and that of itself is a full time job. It is enough that our government determine what is best for the people of this country, then just do what is necessary to see to it, regardless of the consequences. The ends justify the means.

Recently, a U.S. President referred to The Constitution of the United States as a piece of paper that needs to be a “living document” (interpret as changeable). I guess it should not surprise me that after decades of dumbing-down students in our public educational system, an elected official would play rock-paper-scissors with the cornerstone document of this country and it barely gets a whimper out of the media. Of course, I’m sure there is also a direct correlation to embracing relativism and discarding the whole idea of absolute truth in our culture today. With that whole ‘truth thing’ out of the way, anything goes.

While you are waiting patiently for my next blog, take a look in the rear view mirror to 1930’s Germany. Interesting…