It seems to me, that in the western world we are surrendering our responsibilities to government in one form or another. As citizens of any country in the world, it behooves us to be individually and socially responsible, instead of taking responsibility we make or allow a law to be made to cover it. Moreover we are allowing sloppy blanket laws to replace being responsible and to mask the real issues.
Children are being abused and killed, so we make a law covering all parents banning spanking. Never mind that as individuals we all have our own ideas about discipline, never mind that spanking is different to beating, never mind that government has no place getting between a child and its parent. The real issue here is that some people lack control, lack education and lack money. Governments would be better off spending money to ensure Child Protection Agencies are sufficiently resourced and staffed, that new parents have access to support educationally and financially to prevent the kind of stressors that lead to child abuse. Funding for after school programs, child care would prevent children being left alone while parents work. Incentives for families to enable a stay at home parent so children have a parent available to them full time. There are a myriad of oppotunities that would not only assist the children and prevent abuse but they would help society as a whole, parents being onhand to fully supervise their children would mean less crime as a whole, kids would be home instead of out and about committing crimes and joining gangs.
When are we going to accept that legislating what kids eat through schools is merely a smokescreen on behalf of governments to make it seem they are doing something about the worldwide obesity issue? We want something done about obesity, but we don’t want to exercise and eat healthy meals to do it. No lets ban McDonalds/KFC and Pizza because some people lack the mental capacity to realise that eating three meals a day there is going to make them fat. Lets ban fast food advertising because if people don’t see a burger on tv they won’t be encouraged to eat it. How about instead, we introduce the subsidies that used to ensure things like Milk, Fruit and Vegetables were not only freely available but cost less than takeout? Lets make it possible for even the poorest family to have access to exercise facilities through community centres for free, lets make the streets and parks safe to walk, run and play in for children so they can get out and ride their bikes, climb trees and generally do all the things kids used to do before their both had to work to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths.
How about we ensure people are personally responsible for crimes they commit? How about we stop being lenient on offenders who claim an abused childhood? How about we make them face the fact that they are responsible for their behavior and there is no excuse?
Then there are pets, how about instead of forcing animals to be microchipped, charging high registration fees to responsible pet owners to cover irresponsible owners, we make the irresponsible owners take responsibility? How about when a dog attacks, looking at why it happened instead of just punishing the dog? Was the owner at fault? Was the person who got attacked at fault? How about instead of banning specific breeds of dog, we ban irresponsible owners? What if instead of limiting the number of cats to a household, animal welfare officers banned irresponsble people from owning tons of cats? In the case of crazy old people owning 16 cats, how about we look at why they have 16 cats?
How about instead of looking to the Government, be it local, national or worldwide, we look at taking our social and moral responsibilities seriously to eliminate the social problems we currently face.
