TENNESSEE: Our Loss Of Freedom

OFF THE WIRE
http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_204966.asp
Our Loss Of Freedom

posted July 12, 2011
Often we justify our actions by the greater good or so we tell ourselves. My comments are to provoke some reflective thought about our freedoms.
Freedom is not free, it comes with many perils and dangers. To have freedom means mistakes, accidents, bad decisions but it is our decisions not someone else’s.
Can you remember when our teachers could paddle misbehaving students, we rode our motorcycles without helmets, we could buy and use regular light bulbs, we had a say whether we lived in the county or the city, we drove our cars without seat belts, and even bought a shotgun at Western Auto to hunt rabbits without a background check.
Now I can make an argument about all the good that comes from these laws and regulations but all of them do remove from us a certain amount of freedom that we once enjoyed. My point to consider is have we paid too much for what we have attained?
Are health coverage premiums lower in states that require motorcycle helmets? Do we have fewer bad criminals with shotguns today? Can mercury filled light bulbs made in another country really save us that much energy? Are our school children better behaved then we were? How smart are we to require seat belts in every car but haul our students to school in buses every day without them? Not to mention we drive our brand new emission legal car to the testing facility every year even though it has to manufactured to their specs.
For me, my preference is for my government to step back and allow me to make my own mistakes as opposed to being protectively engineered.
Dennis Allison Ooltewah