Undoctrination.org

There’s been an e-mail floating around that addresses some of the things we “old guys” (if you were a child raised in the sixties, or before) used to endure as children – no bike helmets, no brakes on homemade go-carts, BB gun fights that rarely put your eye out, playing with balls of mercury, chasing after the “bug sprayer” truck that doused the neighborhood (and us) with DDT to control mosquitoes … you get the idea – and amazingly, we survived.

I perused that e-mail just the other day again (because e-mails have a way of re-circulating relentlessly), and realized that not one of the things listed is considered “appropriate” behavior in today’s world. In fact, many of the items on the list are now illegal.

Here’s the e-mail, for reference purposes:

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

A broken thermometer gave us hours of entertainment rolling the mercury around in globs – with our fingers.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because……

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Play Stations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

The city bug sprayer put volumes of DDT in the air all over town to control mosquitoes – and we got doused by the guy on the back if we followed too close.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
HOW TODEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!

So here we are, in the 21^st Century, and we’ve allowed “well-meaning” special interest groups, attorneys, and lawmakers to completely take over our lives with regulations and rules that we must adhere to – “or ELSE.”

Personal accountability and common sense are apparently beyond comprehension for us “regular folk” – the government knows what’s best for us, because some meddling special interest group has convinced them that “we” need constant supervision from ourselves. And we’ve allowed this!

Is the world more dangerous than it was forty years or so ago? I think not. There were “bad” people around then, too – and dangers.  But our parents taught us to avoid the dangers. We were taught to never take candy from strangers, or accept a ride from a stranger. We were taught to look both ways before we crossed the street.  Sure, there’s more people around today than there were forty years ago (more people = more bad people), and diligence is needed by good parents. IT’S CALLED PARENTING, folks.

But what about adults? Do we really need to be told what, when, and where we can eat, drink, smoke, ingest or otherwise expose ourselves to certain things through thought, viewing and/or reading? Is it really necessary to mandate to restaurateurs (private business owners) what they can or cannot allow their patrons to do, or what they can and cannot SERVE their patrons? Common sense would dictate that if customer “A” didn’t approve of the business practices, they’d take their business to an establishment that was more in line with their personal philosophies. If customers “A through “Z” started going elsewhere, the astute business owner would either change his practices, or go out of business. It started with the BS smoking ordinances. Based on JUNK SCIENCE, a few meddling people coerced local and state governments into imposing “smoke free” environments just about everywhere. Truth be known, most restaurants were slowly reducing the sizes of their “smoking sections” – because of patron DEMAND (more people were requesting “nonsmoking sections. Those sections expanded to accommodate). In a decade or so, this “problem” would have taken care of itself. Most other retail outlets had already self-imposed nonsmoking rules. But the meddlers were impatient. And they won, and got their foot in the door. So now, it’s sugar content. And salt content. And fat content. Because “we” obviously don’t know what’s good for us – “they” do. We’ve allowed government agencies to dictate to us how we can act, and where. Is this the kind of country we really want to live in?

Every time a risqué program airs on TV – or even a documentary that deals with human anatomy or crime (for instance), a “CAUTION” warning pops up telling us that the content may not be suitable for all viewers. And then after every commercial break, the same “WARNING” is posted again – just in case you missed it the first time. I don’t know about you, but I can determine within a few minutes if a program is suitable for my personal tastes – or interests. And I don’t need to be warned every few minutes that what I am watching is not suitable for all audiences, because of violence, sexual situations, or language.  That’s WHY I have well over 200 TV channels available, so I can FIND suitable programming.

We have been herded in to the corrals, people. We’re ripe for slaughter now. We’ve allowed our ability to think for ourselves to be taken over by “Big Brother” (recommended reading: “1984” by George Orwell … even though he was about thirty years or so too early with his predictions).

We need to CHANGE this. We need to quit suing everybody because we did something stupid – to ourselves. We need to take personal responsibility for our OWN actions. If you want to smoke like a chimney for forty years, do NOT sue the tobacco company if you contract cancer. If you slip on a puddle of water, you should have watched where you were going, instead of having your head buried in your twitter account.  If you eat like a pig, it’s YOUR fault you’re fat, and it’s YOUR fault you’re gonna die from cardiac arrest. OK?

Use COMMON SENSE. You’ll be amazed at how liberating it can be.  And if you lack the ability to use common sense, you’re the perfect example of the “survival of the fittest” theory, bud. Deal with it. It sucks to be you.

Michael Fisher, Staff Writer