More Overreach

Further to my last post regarding the proverbial genie being irretrievably out of the bottle, more news about government overreach comes from Maryland, that bastion of liberalism.  It seems parents allowed their ten and six year old children to walk home from a local park by themselves.  A distance of a mile, in a neighborhood in which they live and know well.  And for this egregious act, the parents are being investigated for neglect presumably mainly because they believe in a concept called "free range kids."  Imagine.  Not only that it's essentially now a crime to "allow" your own kids movement free from governmental interference, but that some anonymous do-gooder finds it necessary to call the police.  Ironically, both parents are well educated, liberal, and have brain-based careers. Not your impoverished, uneducated and unemployed ne'er-do-wells you may expect in a case like this.  No matter, Big Nanny knows what's best for you and yours, and you better comply if you don't want us to take your little darlings from you.  Yep. That was literally the threat the county social servicers levied against the parents.

Kids and Bikes = FREEDOM!

Never mind that when you and I were kids, we roamed endlessly: to school, to friends' houses, play grounds, to the store, literally everywhere.  And we didn't need to be categorized as free range kids.  We didn't wear helmets when we rode our bikes.  Why?  Because it wasn't necessary.  Sometimes an elbow or knee lost some skin, but in those days, you shook it off, got back on the bike and continued with your day.  It wasn't a big deal.  Contrast that attitude with today's parents' hyper-caution.  Helicopter parents do no good for their children; in fact they do harm to a child's natural growth, both emotionally and physically.  But hyper-risk adverse parenting has been around for several generations now, and it's no wonder we've become a nation of coddled pussies, when we have no experience of want, misfortune or loss for a frame of reference.  What damage has this hyper-protection done to our very culture, as we become the home of the unbrave?  All risk has been mitigated in our children's lives, sadly resulting in the loss of a realistic notion of life, and certainly of personal responsibility.

Now the busy bodies aren't just the little old lady down the street, it's the government itself.  And as it tries to protect us from ourselves, it does nothing more than create mindless, scared, dependent automatons, and liberty is the fatality in the face of tyranny.  But of course, that was the plan all along.