Photo courtesy photobucket.com The wily fox slunk through the underbrush, darted quickly into my yard, grabbed a hen, and dashed back into the woods. The only signs of the attack were a pile of feathers and the cacophony of sound from the remaining chickens.
To unfold the mystery of this caper one must look to the owner of said chicken and to certain decisions which he made that led to the demise of this hen. As a keeper of poultry, I like to let my birds graze from the grass in my yard. The chickens get better feed and more exercise. My feed bill is also cheaper. There are risks of course, neighborhood dogs or foxes can prey on my flock.
Since the attack occurred I have kept the brood locked in their pen and plan to until I can solve the problem of said vixen. My poor chickens have lost their freedom because I have a security issue.
The parallels that can be drawn from this scenario hit real close to home. Looking back to many of the tragic events caused by terrorists we can see the knee-jerk reactions which followed them. After 9/11 our government set up a huge new bureaucracy in the Dept. of Homeland Security. Under this umbrella our airports turned into quasi-military establishments. Privacy rights were trampled upon in the form of new wire-tapping laws ans unwarranted surveillance. While many see this as making us safer, I see these events as a great loss of freedom.
Another example of this occurred following the bombing of the Boston Marathon. The city of Boston was essentially put under martial law in the name of protecting its citizens from danger. Warrant-less house to house searches were conducted regardless of their constitutionality.
I know you've heard all this from the "fringe", but I also see some real problems with this. We seem to be all about freedom and our rights until there is an emergency. When something bad happens the government doesn't seem to have a problem with trampling on those rights. We are a less free people since these two events happened. In this sense, the terrorists won and we lost, even after twelve years of war trying to prove other wise.
The government seems to look at us like their flock of chickens. Do we dumbly go along because they know what is good for us or do we stand up and say, wait a minute? Do we question the loss of freedom that has occurred? Is more supposed security really worth being "penned up" inside more government regulation?
The American people need to put down their "foot" and say enough is enough. Freedom involves risk, no government program can take the risk away, but repeated attempts to do so by government, have resulted in minimal changes to risk and great lessening of freedom. Until we decide that we aren't a flock of chickens, our perceived masters will see us as such and keep trying to "save" us. I for one don't want to see a world without risk, for if and when that happens, there will also be no freedom and that will be the greatest tragedy.
