People become ignorant through complacency. MAGA hat wearing dildos that can't make an argument beyond "freedom!!!!" fail to recognize that the extremes of their worldview are little more than luddism, a misplaced longing for simpler times, and a beaten like a dead horse misrepresentation of patriotism. Times before the industrial revolution when something as simple as diarrhea was deadly. Times when women and children were treated as little more than chattel, and people with a different skin tone were treated worse. Times when basic survival was the only game in town.
As laudable and historic as our Constituition is, it is also a living document.
It did not guarantee nor even desire voting rights for women, people that didn't own land, or slaves (who were still counted for Congressional purposes, but only as 3/5ths of a human being). It deliberately disenfranchised most of the citizenry.
Oh and it has had to be amended 27 times. So far.
So many on the right (and a far smaller aspect of the left) fail to grasp though just how legitimately horrified the founders would be at the outcomes of their grand experiment for good or for ill. Most would definitely throw up in their mouths at the rabid state of patriotism we have today.
Why is patriotism not a clever idea? Well it can be, but it can equally become fuel for propaganda. I always go on and on about words and the value in their definitions and origins. Patriotism derives from the Latin "patria" which means "father". So patriotism has its roots ideally in a fealty towards a society. But its just a verbal misstep away from the idea of a "fatherland". When we translated German ideals into English during WW2 it is interesting to note that we used that phrase of similar meaning to patriotism, merely phrased with different words, to draw a distinction.....rather than note a potentially dangerous parallel. 🤔
Concepts of freedom and liberty are vitally important, but they have to be couched in the reality that we live in a collective society. A machine where everyone relies on everyone else to create this thing we call a society.
From the cashier that rings up your groceries, the construction worker that helps pave a road, to the aerospace engineers that keep GPS working, and to the theoretical physicists whose field made GPS possible and everyone else literally everyone else in between. We couldn't live our daily boring-ass lives without any of these people.
And yet this reality is where most of the apathy and complacency I mention in the beginning stems from. It is an almost insulting denial of reality.
And ALL of that requires a functional government and tax base. All too often the conversation is two dimensional. Small government vs. big government. The size isn't the issue. The issue is priorities.
A government's role in such a large collective society is to simply establish the rules. Those rules do define what constitutes winners and losers in a society. But that depends entirely on your definition of winning and losing. A billionaire who gets taxed at a high tax rate and still remains ridiculously wealthy because math (duh!) isn't a loser in any definable sense of the term.
It isn't about what is free and what is not. It's about deciding the minimums of what we as a society are willing to accept to create the environment we want to live in.
As a for instance, for nearly half a century Germany has had essentially free education and universal health care.
You or one of your children could go to Germany today and receive an inexpensive higher education in engineering and the sciences...... Taught in English!! Wrap your mind around that little fact. Don't need citizenship.... technically don't need to really know German that well.
Germany is doing fine. They are not Venezuela. Both are basically Democratic Socialist countries. The difference is priorities. The only difference fundamentally.
They are merely interested in having a well-educated populace so that the country can maintain its stature as a leader in engineering and science.
I think we all have a vested interest in not being surrounded by stupid people. Education isn't solely about future career paths, even with the current valid conversation about college vs. technical schools. Many initial careers are more greatly impacted by social connections than ones education. But getting a proper education above all else teaches you HOW to think and problem solve. It is fundamentally empowering regardless of how well or poorly it might line your future selfs pocket.
We can see it throughout centuries of history. The society that innovates thrives. The society that values education and STEM fields flourishes economically. High tides do indeed lift all boats.
It isn't free versus not free. It isn't freedom versus taxes. Such arguments are just vaguely clever ways of misunderstanding and abusing language. It's about priorities and a future we can live with.
