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| Out to play Saturday morning at sunrise, home before dark. |
Children and dogs run free in some of the places I visit. It makes you long for childhood again. Kids are safe, loved, watched over by the adults who shape their world. Adults make the rules, make the schedule, supply the things that are needed as best they can. And who watches over the adults? Communities do, I suppose, and government watches over it all.
Now we arrive at the question of personal freedom. There are many cultures that want to be closer to the childlike life where they are watched over and cared for. Then there are countries like my own that are pretty emphatic about government 'of the people', etc. We presume that our version of freedom is universally desired, but the truth is otherwise. Many have come and been overwhelmed by the number of choices and decisions required to make it through any given day in America. They've been stunned, overloaded, and gone back where they started where rules and choices are more narrowly shaped.
I'd prefer a safer, more stable and predictable world perhaps, but until mercy and justice reign, I'll stick with democracy and government by the people. As a form of government, it sucks; it's just better than the alternatives.
Freedom, then, isn't a universal value, as a friend pointed out the other day. But fairness, justice, mercy, compassion; such things call to us so insistently.
