Dangerous Precedents

Can anyone tell me when I moved to China? Because until the last year I always thought that I lived in America, land of the free.

Sure it's been building up for years --people telling me how I should live my life. You're evil if you smoke, drive an SUV, eat red meat, spank your kids, etc., etc., etc. But other than being annoyed, I was able to ignore the screaming advice and admonitions.

My first real glimpse into this parallel communist universe was the Supreme Court's unconstitutional eminent domain ruling. I still can't believe that this happened in the United States of America. I further can't believe that there's not more outrage among my fellow Americans. Have we become so lazy and self-absorbed that we either don't realize the significance of this ruling, or don't care enough to be outraged? Rest assured, when a developer decides to build condos or a mall on top of your house, you'll probably start to care then.

The latest communist antics come out of the most unlikely place --Texas. Police officers there have decided that it's not acceptable for legal adults to consume too much alcohol at a bar. (Including hotel bars, where the drinker is spending the night; this has nothing to do with driving) This is not the police being called in to arrest an unruly drunk disturbing the peace or threatening other patrons; the police are actually doing sweeps of bars to arrest people that they feel, at their disgression, have drank too much.

What happened to the concepts of personal responsibility and accountability? If I want to chain smoke whilst guzzling a bottle of Jack and eating a massive steak with ice cream on top, no one should be able to stop me! Regardless of your personal aversion to alcohol or meat or your superior exercise and dietary behaviors --in the words of Montgomery Gentry, You do your thing, I'll do mine.

We in modern-day Chino-America need to get involved, we need to be outraged. We need to stand up for individual rights and freedoms. Before this commi-culture road we're walking down goes too far.