An
Unmolested Life
Charlie Earl
Our world
and our nation have become a creepy place. If one is a student of history and a
biblical scholar, one is aware that we’ve always been a creep-laden planet (at
least since the Fall). For two hundred twenty-five years we in the United
States have managed to avoid the more intense elements of creepiness because
our Founders and Framers devised a plan for liberty wherein people were
expected to assume personal responsibility for their actions. Deviants and
perverts have always lived among us, but their impact and harm may have been
somewhat blunted by the certainty of swift punitive justice if they were to
step over the line. Shame, too, was a factor. Our communities of the past did
not tolerate harmful aberrant behavior, and thus, twisted individuals faced a
greater impetus for controlling their unhealthy behaviors.
Over time it
has become clear that many of our communities’ restrictions were unnecessarily
harsh and antithetical to personal liberty … gifted and granted by God. Many of
the former ways and norms were over-zealous and too tyrannical and created
pockets of resentment, agony and persecution. Discreet consensual activity
should never be the province of the government, but governments cannot make
moral choices, equitable decisions or fair judgments. Where government can and
should intervene is when one’s behavior and actions harm another person either
physically or materially. The force of government should be implemented to
require accountable restitution or imprisonment if the damage was criminal
rather than negligent. Damage to children should be handled particularly
forcefully because they generally lack the means for defending themselves.
Therefore, pedophiles and stalkers should be given no quarter.
There is a
level or degree of molestation beyond individual versus individual that should
never be permitted in a democratic republic. It is when the government assumes
that it has the right and the moral authority to restrict individual liberty. When
a government places little value on the peoples’ right to choose their
individual destinies, it degrades their decision-making capabilities and thus
undermines their accountability for their own actions. If the individual is
incapable of making sound choices for him or herself, then the onus is on the
chooser when those choices are bad, immoral or unwise. By limiting choice and
personal responsibility, governments implicitly encourage bad choices and
unwise behavior. The cascading effect is that some deviants may assume that
their behaviors have minimal consequences because the sources of their choices
are societal rather than personal. A lax attitude generated by the sense that
someone else (government) determines life’s choices results in a diminished
sense of personal responsibility… and shame.
Those of us
who have been around for several decades can attest to the power of shame as a
tool for subduing hurtful behavior. When the society and the culture are
subservient to government, the prohibitions formerly enforced by society become
meaningless because it is the government that assumes collective responsibility
through its limiting of personal choice and accountability. Standards disintegrate
or become confusing. Acceptable social behavior transforms into a kubuki dance
of politically correct and “OK-for-the moment” types of aberrant lifestyles
because individuals do not matter, and they are not responsible for the harm
and damage they do. Molestation and abuse of any type at any time should never
be tolerated. Yet an attitude that undermines individual freedom also discounts
personal responsibility. When collective government-preferred mores replace individual
consciences and accountability, inhibitions retreat, and shameless entitlement
becomes the driving impetus for harming others and damaging their lives and
property.
The apparent
flood of molesters, deviants, perverts and murderers who accost our children
can be correlated with an overblown, impersonal collective government that
denies individual liberty while promoting collective responsibility rather than
personal choices and accountability. Big government is deviant and perverse
because it has no moral base or foundation. Big government views individuals as
threats. Big government at every level is the molester-in-chief and the number
one enabler of those who unabashedly and unrepentantly harm others. Amorality
begets evil. The new view is that we must understand and correct the malignant
molester while we define the lover of individual liberty as a dangerous deviant.
The lowest common denominator is now the ruler.
Charlie Earl
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