Thoughts that were duct taped to my cerebrum

now here’s one I can’t answer right away

I can’t seem to come up with a good answer for this question. It was in the middle of a quiz online and I have scratched my head over it for quite a while. Which one is the most balanced? An appropriate answer would be one which respects all government as authority whether the people under it like it or not, and which simultaneously supports the rights of the people under those governments. hmmm….

Here’s the question:

Concerning the liberty and political freedom of people in countries other than the United States…

(1.) They are free by nature; if their governments deny them liberty then their governments are illegitimate.

(2.) They are free if they are democratic; if they democratically decide not to have certain “freedoms” or “liberties” then they have the right to do so.

(3.) They are free or not free by their own choice; if they support a monarchy or some form of dictatorship (or do not overthrow it), who are we to pronounce what is best for them?

Alicia <3

Tags: government, questions, rights

directive?

Like i said the other day, i would like to put forth another few points about WALL·E, besides it being a great movie in and of itself.

Fun aside, i think it’s really interesting that this movie hasn’t come under more media fire. True, it’s the subject of many blog postings and random online rants across the world wide web, but arguments against it don’t seem to have gathered much momentum despite the fact that it makes a HUGE political statement about America.

First of all there’s the fact that the movie portrays earth as being full of garbage (which is presumably our fault) and that it is practically beyond saving. Maybe we’ll get there one day, but I doubt this will happen anytime soon, much less very easily. (Think about it. Try to fill the Mariana Trench with regular old consumer garbage! Now, if we were littering cruise ships, that might be different.) Anyway, I think if the earth eventually becomes inhabitable, it’d be because of air pollutants and water pollutants, not because garbage filled the entire globe. I also think with the technology the people had in the movie, they should have invented another way to deal with the garbage, because it seems to me that they had already come up with some pretty ingenious ways of making themselves lazier. Therefore the only thing keeping them from finding another solution was certainly not lack of insight; it was probably just laziness, which was almost their undoing in the end (funny how it comes right back to you, huh?).

Then there’s the part about how we all built spaceships to escape the mess we created and zoomed off into space, where we had created our own little lives in a bubble and didn’t have to do anything worth doing, ever. We also got fat, very fat, lost alot of bone structure from laying around in space for several generations, and forgot how to really LIVE instead of survive (which is why those on board the Axiom gradually turned more and more cartoonish than their ancestors). The hoverchair things made it so you never had to get up. The servant-like bot things following people around all the time made it unnecessary to ever deviate your planned course. You could even save yourself the work of chewing and have “lunch in a cup”, for pete’s sake. (Ew.) Advertisement saturation made it so easy to see what was “new” and “different”, and you could simply push a button to make pretty much anything happen. No one bothered making their own choices because it was just so simple to let some computerized thing make them for you.

But, if you noticed at the beginning, the holographic billboards were happy to inform you that the Axiom was meant to be luxury - not laziness. It was supposed to be convenience at its best, but it went bad. For example, the original plan according to the holographic messages included grandma in a hoverchair, and everyone else walking.

I thought this was a strikingly realistic representation of America. The obesity factor is kind of obvious, so i won’t go into that. The illustrations that most readily come to mind when i think of this movie are welfare and caring for elderly family. Let me explain myself. Welfare was meant to be a helping hand in moderation, for those who need it. Now people can live on just welfare dollars and never get a job, just because they qualify for government assistance. Maybe originally they could have held a job just fine, but when all is said and done they will have forgotten how to work or do anything productive, because the government does everything for them. I’ve posted about this before because welfare gets me very fired up.

As far as caring for the elderly, it used to be American tradition to honor your elders and care for your parents when they got older - in fact the Bible tells us to! - but now there are retirement communities full of people being cared for with government dollars instead of by their kids. I realize some older people don’t have family to look after them, and I also understand that places like nursing homes are meant to give medical care that a family might not be able to provide. But there are gazillions of places out there promising “independent living” and designed to be as comfortable as home. It’s great that someone can provide that for the elderly, but they shouldn’t have to. The laziness of the American family feeds things like this and makes them bigger.

At the end of the movie, we see that the only way for earth to flourish again is if the people who return treat it with care and work to get a yield from the earth again (eg. by farming to replenish the soil). Similarly, the only way for the captain to bring civilization back to earth again and make them realize where their home is in the first place is to get up out of his annoying hoverchair and do something about it (never mind that he would be like walking jello at that point). I think this makes a good point about what Americans will have to do if they’d like the country to do well economically again. America was founded on the idea that we have freedom, but we must work for it. Remember “he who does not work, does not eat?” And whatever happened to “freedom isn’t free?” Even when civil rights were a problem way back when, blacks understood that since us whites weren’t getting it, they’d just have to work harder to make a life here. I admire their spirit for realizing that the task ahead of them had to be done diligently, even when racial prejudice was just insane - and terrifying.

If we want America to be better than it is, we’re gonna have to get up out of our “hoverchairs” and do something. Some already are. It also helps to think about how our own personal budget eventually affects the national budget - it’s crazy, but it’s true. If you ask me this also means that how we live on a small scale will definitely affect how America turns out. People who are on welfare but don’t need it are going to have to learn that they don’t need it. People need to earn their living, and that in turn will produce a generation more caring and responsible for their personal property than the previous one, because it’s actually theirs. They sweated for it and protected it and reaped the benefits.

I think we also need to show a little more love/patience and lots of responsibility. We all need to realize that we live in America together, and we’re responsible for each other. In an economic crisis like this, everyone freaks out and blames everyone else, when really most of us are in the same boat. No matter whose fault it is, blaming doesn’t help. We can start being smart with our money, and we can pray the government will be smart with theirs too. For that matter, we can turn back to God as a nation because that’s how we started, and the farther we go from our foundation the more citizens lose out on true freedom.

And we can watch WALL·E, because it’s a cute movie with good morals mixed in.

Alicia <3

Tags: America, economics, elderly, garbage, government, movie, political, WALL·E, welfare

fare thee well

I thought i’d just say rather abruptly that i am getting more and more fed up with government. The more i think about the way our country is run, the more i want it to be run differently. lol. the problem with this is, that in comparison to alot of people, i know NOTHING about politics so i’m not really in a place to write to governors and such telling them what I think they should do. I definitely think somewhere there is a line between being involved in your country’s government and just voicing your opinion because you want to have things your way… and i am honestly not sure which category i fit into.

Take my feelings towards welfare, for example. Some people honestly do need to be on welfare. They seriously cannot make a living for themselves or can’t provide for their family completely for whatever reason, and since no one steps up to take care of them, the government’s compensation is a pretty honest living for them if you ask me. However, it bothers me ALOT that tons of people on welfare today don’t need it…  They are capable of doing work, they are capable of supporting their lifestyle and/or family, and if they can’t get a job, they at least know where to get enough education so they CAN get one. The only reason they are on welfare is because it costs them more money to get a job and be responsible than it does to stay home and not work. Once someone on welfare starts bringing in their own income, the amount of compensation the government provides goes down, and they end up with less money from working than when they were just staying home. If i were in that situation, i know for a fact i’d quit my job and live on welfare to save money - why would i work if it got me less income?

Because of the vicious nature of being on welfare in the first place, the government is expanding the lower classes. People are now dependent on welfare not because they can’t survive by themselves, but because if they try to do it themselves, the welfare system comes back at them and depletes their personal resources. I think it’s smart for the government to help with things like medicaid, or disability benefits, and stuff like that, but i don’t think the government should make a living for people. As long as the government is doing it for them, low income citizens will never be able to do it themselves, and the gap between classes will just get bigger and bigger. Part of America’s foundation in the first place is a Puritan work ethic, and welfare for all no matter what doesn’t encourage hard work, discipline or any of the things the founding fathers intended be a part of this country. I understand there are those who actually need help making a living, but surely there is a way to make it “fair” so that people who don’t really need it can’t take advantage of it (at least not as much as they are right now).

My dad and i were talking about this and he thinks maybe the welfare system would work better if welfare only applied for a certain amount of time (with exceptions). For example, someone could only rely on government funding for 3 years, and then they would have to go out and do it themselves for a period of time - unless they were recieving welfare long term, like for disability. This would also help out the problem of illegal immigrants taking advantage of government dollars at the taxpayers’ expense… Which i might write about tomorrow (that and why prisons should not have cable tv). [:

Alicia <3

Tags: benefits, compensation, disability, government, immigrants, system, taxpayer, welfare