Words That Don’t Make Sense: “Too Many Liberties”

[High Praise! to According to Hoyt]
_______________

How can anyone think we have too many liberties?

Oh, I know. They think that because they believe in the myth of the “superior man” who will take care of them. The man on the white horse who knows better than everyone, and who can run everything so that no one is ever afraid or poor or sick or marginalized.

In other words, they dream of the ideal childhood.

The rest of us know that never in the history of the world, not even the calmest, has there been a time when a leader could guarantee safety, health and contentment to everyone. There will always be poor, unloved, suffering people. You can’t help that.

You behave in a way you help those around you and you try not to be a burden, but even then at times that will fail.

Those of us who are religious believe a time will come when we will live like that, in perfect harmony and contentment with a superior being watching over us.

But last time I looked, neither king, premier, president, emperor or satrap had the power to look into the hearts and minds and judge everyone perfectly. And no, the NSA spying ain’t it. And none of the above were the creators of the universe.

They are all, in fact, fallible men, usually fallible men attracted to power over others, who want to run you not for your own good but for their own internal satisfaction. And since people who crave this sort of power tend to be more broken than writers, their internal satisfaction might be something that even they don’t understand.

There is no man on a white horse. There is, always, an old trickster, coming to town and promising eternal peace. If you look carefully, you can see the horse is a mule that has been painted white. And the man is just using the same old promises the human brain is wired to crave, but what he wants is quite different. And even if he truly believes what he says, he can’t deliver. He’s just a man. He can’t know what each individual wants and needs. Only each of you can know what he wants and needs. And sometimes not even that.
_______________

3 Comments

  1. Speaking of liberties, I would just like to take the liberty of saying that the Washington Huskies are going to chew-up and devour the Boise State Broncos today.

    Okay, I know that’s off topic. My badness.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.