Protecting our children’s Liberty
I was born in raised in Massachusetts, not far from where the first shot of the American Revolution was fired. I grew up learning about the colonial times, the Revolutionary War, Liberty, Freedom, and Patriotism. Now, looking back over my life, I realize that I’ve taken Liberty for granted. I suppose many of us have, being that it has never been so seriously threatened before. When you’ve had it so good for so long, you get used to how things are. You expect things to stay the way they’ve always been.
The real wake-up call came when I started thinking about what my children could grow up believing Patriotism to be. It occurred to me that they may grow up believing that it is the responsibility of the individual to support the needs of the collective. That the purpose of the person is to contribute to the people. That one must be careful what they think or say, because disagreeing with the collective is unpatriotic. So now I find myself explaining what Liberty and Patriotism are to my children, hopefully fending off unwholesome leftist influences from ensnaring my children. It is a never ending struggle, leftist ideology has infiltrated Mainstream Media as well as the public education system.
What comes next, however, is what I worry about the most. Educating my children about Liberty, Patriotism, and the American experience may protect them from falling into the leftist’s ideological traps. But what of the legislative assault on their current, and potential, way of life? ObamaCare, Amnesty for Illegals, Financial Reform, Education Reform, and the overall expansion of government and the taxes required to sustain it? Much of President Obama’s agenda threatens the way of life I grew up to expect, and what my children deserve!
Keeping sight of what is important
I recently experienced a rather painful injury to my left eye. My 7 month old managed to poke me in the eye while we were playing, and I ended up with a 5mm corneal abrasion. While not an incredibly serious injury, a 5mm corneal abrasion (dead center on the eye, mind you) is very painful and it drastically reduces your ability to see. It hurts to blink, it hurts not to blink. You end up in a constant state of trying to find the least painful direction to look, and the darkest corner of the room in which to do it. Due to the lateness of the hour, I had to wait until morning to see an eye doctor and by the time morning finally came, I was in agony. To put it bluntly, the experience totally sucked.
I must admit that I did find some value in the experience, however. When nearly every aspect of your daily life relies on your ability to see relatively clearly, losing that ability stops you in your tracks. This might sound a bit obvious, but it is difficult to truly understand it without experiencing it first hand. You find yourself relying on your other senses to help you get through the day. Feeling your way around, listening for the dog so you don’t step on the poor thing, hoping you remember where the coffee table is. You end up relying more and more on your other senses to get you through the day, especially the sense of touch.
It was the act of feeling my way down the hall to find the bathroom that gave me the idea behind this article. During our normal day to day lives, many of us simply go about our routines. We have goals that we seek to achieve, and most of us approach our goals with familiar and obvious methodology. This may get the job done, but could we be missing something? I definitely think so.
FTC endorsement regulations already apply online
The Associated Press recently announced that the Federal Trade Commission’s “Guide Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials” will be revised soon. All week, articles have been popping up across the Internet reporting that these changes will introduce regulation of blogs and bloggers by the FTC.
What they fail to report, is that FTC regulations already apply to bloggers and their blogs. In fact, these regulations apply to use of email, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, just to name a few.
Blogs and discussion boards are both discussed in the FTC’s “Guidelines Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, Notice of proposed changes,” but not as newly regulated media. The pending changes to the guide introduce new example scenarios intended to illustrate how FTC regulation may apply in some situations. The guide is not the definition of the law, nor does it encompass every possible scenario in which the FTC can take action. The sole purpose for the guide is to act as, well, a guide.