What's Wrong with America - In Response to a "Survey"

GOT THIS IN MY E-MAIL

I'm taking a poll on what is wrong with America. If you would care to tell me what you find wrong with the country's moral dilemma, taxes, gun control, abortion, TV, the War in Iraq, or anything else. I promise I will keep names secret, but will send the results to you.

Susan


Here's what's wrong with America, Susan:

1. Freedom of Speech - You can't shut people up who disagree with you. How can you keep people from thinking things you don't want them to think unless you can keep other people from saying things that give them ideas? Adolph Hitler kicked his country's economy into high gear, boosted national pride and reduced crime virtually overnight. The first thing he did was shut down newspapers and radio stations that disagreed with the majority view - which also happened to be his view. Free speech promotes inefficiency, unrest and too much thinking. All that talking gets us into trouble all the time. All those peacenicks in the 30s made Hitler and Tojo think we were a pushover and led to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The soft-talking government we elected in the 70's made the Ayatollah think they could make hostages of our embassy staff to embarrass us on the world stage. If we could make everybody shut up, then the other Nations of the World would finally understand us because we'd be more like them. In most countries of the world, television and radio stations are controlled by the government. Surprisingly little gets through that is disagreeable. Now isn't that a more enlightened way to run things. Think how much happier we would all be if we didn't have to watch all that arguing and wrangling on the nightly news here in the States.

2. Freedom of Religion - Religion is the most powerful force known to man. If you can make all religious authorities say the same thing, it's easier to control people, easier to make them do what you think they "should" do, and easier to isolate and eliminate groups whose ideas you find repugnant. It would be easier that way to create one big religion that makes people be more moral or get rid of religion altogether since religions only serve to make people feel guilty for doing things they the way they want to do them.

3. The Right to Bear Arms - If all people can carry weapons, it's much harder for a government to enforce its will when the people do not agree with what the government is doing. If you can take away everyone's weapons, the rate of gun crime will go down because the government can more easily control the populace the media and the spread of information and ideas. The government would then be able to make people "feel" better by telling them the crime rate had gone down (even if it hadn't) because there would be little way for anyone to find out any different. Government leaders could more easily consolidate and retain power. That way really smart people (who ought to be running everything anyway) could force us not so smart people to behave ourselves, do what they want us to do and not gripe so much - a major cause of unrest in America.

4. Limits on Taxation - (If the smart people in government could take more of our money, then they could redistribute it more fairly and evenly so no people would ever be hungry (or fat), be anxious (or well-informed), be ignorant (or too smart for their own good) or be troublesome (if someone shoots up a school we won't have to fool with a pesky trial, national media attention or any of that upsetting stuff. We could just take the kids out and shoot them and cover it up in the press so nobody would know and be troubled by the incident and no other kids would be able to copy cat these violent acts.)

5. Free Trade - If the smart people in government could decide how trade should be conducted then other nations would finally understand Americans. If the smart people in the government could make it so everybody got the same amount of pay so no one would be upset because someone made more than them, then you wouldn’t have the problem of the ambitious, high performing, hard working types getting more than their share of the money. You'd never lose your job no matter how poorly you did it and only smart government people would live in big mansions instead of movie stars and corporate executives - government officials deserve a higher standard of living after all because they're so much smarter than we are. We haven't had a really well regulated economy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Remember how you never used to hear the Russians complaining about their economy.

6. Our republican style of government - By having so many elected officials and limiting elections to the rules in the Constitution, we're always having to mess around with electing a new government every few years. If we could go to mass "democratic" elections, then someone who was really a good talker might be able to get a 62% approval rating for what he was doing - say if the economy was good - and then he could get himself elected to a third or fourth term - maybe even for life - and then he could gradually get all his buddies elected too and then we wouldn't have to think about elections anymore because we could do away with them and keep this really cool guy in office that makes us all feel good about ourselves. Best of all, we'd never hear about dimpled chads or butterfly ballots any more. The smart guys in government could just recount elections until the will of the people was revealed. Wouldn't it be great if we had a nice stable government like Cuba or Libya.

These are some of the things I think are wrong with America. If you could just fix these things then we'd never have to worry our simple heads about the country's moral dilemma, taxes, gun control, abortion, TV, the War in Iraq or anything else.

Just One Man's Opinion....

Tom King