An idiot's musings.

There are days in life when you look around and realize that... you are a total idiot. When you reach out into the darkness for the handhold you know is there, and then realize... you're not in the ladder shaft you thought you were, or when you step out onto the catwalk and realize that you removed the flooring for maintenance, and your foot just found empty air.

Like when you get in your car, back up, and realize you didn't open the garage door.

I am such an idiot. My idiocy goes beyond the norm. This blog, however, isn't about the stupid mistakes people made, it's about recognizing mistakes people are making.

Our world is a crazy place, beset by economic turmoil, debt, greed, and so many things out of our control. Any idiot can see that.

How many people, though, are stupid enough to say what they actually think? How many are dumb enough to question, to challenge, and to recognize their own idiocy?

How do we as people learn if we don't?

They tell us not to question, but only to accept that which is ladled to us, to accept the meagre scraps which are allotted to us... and that this is not slavery, that this is not control, it's all for our betterment, for we are too stupid to know what is good for us.

They tell us that we must be controlled against our baser natures by force, that we cannot control ourselves, but out of our own body of the people they will raise up those who can control us.

They say it is a pandemic, cascading through human society, but if so, are they not as guilty as any of us of being contaminated by it?

Who are they to judge us inferior? Who are they to say that we, as a people, deserve no power, no dignity, no respect, and are not worthy of or capable of protecting ourselves or others save by their magnamity and largesse in choosing our protectors for us?

If we cannot be trusted with our own protection, and knowing what is best for us, would it not be best to allow it?

Or would it be a descent into certain slavery? We throw around the term of tyranny lightly, like a kite buffeted by the wind, but when its hurricane comes full force upon us, we close our eyes tighter, ignoring the effects it has upon us.

Is it 'better' thus?

If we can remove the rights of others, can it not be said that others can engage to remove our own rights?

What is a right anyway?

Rights are by necessity individual. Our choices are the definers of our rights, our belief and faith in their necessity the arbiters of the actions required to maintain them. Our founding fathers believed that any man attempting to remove the rights of another, to create a 'civil death' via attainder or targeted legislation was a tyrant.

But, I am an idiot. Perhaps I know nothing at all, but I do know that I'm too stupid not to speak, and too ignorant to be cowed by the forces arrayed to prevent so speaking.

I am perhaps an idiot to believe that offense is a choice of the listener, and perhaps too an idiot for believing in the sanctity of communication and thought that I disagree with.

I am an idiot as well, perhaps, for believing that the best guardian of our own interests is we the people ourselves, limited by the knowledge that the rights of all are equally sacrosanct, and equally their personal property.

If we move the control of the exercise of any right to another, that person controls how we use those rights, how we live, how we work, how we breathe, and ultimately, how we die. No court in the united states can permanently alienate the property of our rights outside the sentence, nor can any court, legislator, or executive choose to limit those rights for any class of persons at all, from the whole class to the least person in the society.

So too are we the people limited... if the government cannot create, enforce, or interpret law to limit the rights of any of our people, we cannot vote those rights away. This is a constitutional limited republic, and ultimately the best safeguard of our lives, our liberty, our property, and our happiness.

Even a complete idiot can see that.