2 Paragraphs 4 Liberty: #109 “The Liberty To Fall Down”

           Back when I was growing up, our family rule was for my sister and I to be home in time for dinner.  Otherwise, we were mostly on our own.  So we learned to make forts, climb trees, invent games and wrestle with our friends, all the while learning by our experiences to control and reduce risks in whatever we happened to be doing.  Yes, sometimes we fell down, but we learned from our missteps to be more careful the next time.  In fact, starting with kindergarten, I was walking about a mile to school along a busy street either with others or by myself (I was simply told to be careful and always to cross the busy street with the crossing guard). And through all of these activities, all of us lived to tell about them!

Today in many ways we have gotten away from that approach.  Our children mostly play only in organized sports practices or games, they are “safely” driven everywhere and are only allowed to play on monkey bars if there is foam rubber padding on the ground beneath them.  And it is virtually child abuse to let them walk to school by themselves!  But that is a shame.  Statistics show it is no less safe today for children to walk to school than it was when I was growing up.  Furthermore, losing this Liberty to Fall Down has resulted in fewer young people realistically being able to calculate risks in the business world or elsewhere in their lives.  Unfortunately, this has also been accompanied by a rise in concern that our children could be injured by “micro-aggressions,” so that we must be detect “trigger warnings” so we can protect these “snowflake” children from melting into a puddle if anything goes wrong by creating “safe places” to which they can retreat (from the real world).  All of this is summed up by the quote: “All the worry in the world doesn’t prevent death, it prevents life.”  So let’s ease away from some of the protections, and let our children (gradually) learn to grow up in Liberty.  It’s a better way, more fun and also a better result!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

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