It seems to me that many people look to the government to solve the problems that they generally don’t have control over. On the Left, you get people who are worried about their mortgage or food or jobs. All the personal stuff that is not actually very hard to obtain, provided you are willing to sacrifice some of your lifestyle and swallow your pride. On the Right, it is generally stuff that is much harder to maintain control of, such as terrorist attacks and criminal attacks.
The point here is that both sides have trouble with accepting that some things are not so easily controlled and that sometimes you have to just roll with the punches and push for a better outcome. Over the last year, my wife and I have personally suffered the loss of three (or four) unborn children due to miscarriages. I am not saying this to elicit sympathy, but to point out that no matter what you do, no matter how much you can prepare for things, there will always be something that is out of your control.
Usually when people find out that their life was never under control, they react badly. The BP oil spill is a prime example of this, where everyone is demanding answers and seeking to “press the boot” on BP’s throat until they’ve paid for their mistakes. Already some morons in the mainstream press are blaming God or Dick Chaney for the disaster and it seems to me that these are the thought processes of twisted minds.
I’m not saying that BP couldn’t have prevented the problem nor am I saying that they were up to code in safety standards (which were mostly set by government agents who probably have little understanding of what off-shore drilling really entails). What I am saying is that sometimes you reach a fluke in the system and it causes lots of damage. As a software developer, I can personally attest to the numerous times where my “perfect” code has failed to deliver the desired result due to some curveball by some random data stream I didn’t account for. That was pretty much my entire job at the last company I worked for where every day it seemed like there was a new problem brought on by some lawyer’s client data (fun side story: some people would place pornography in password protected Excel files, which we easily hacked ).
The truth is, no matter what you are doing or not doing to prevent some catastrophe, you will always hit one or two within a ten-year span of your life. In most cases, it will cost you lots of time, money, and provide you a lot of stress. Now, you should prepare for all kinds of potential problems, but at the same time, Murphy’s Laws will always catch up with you.
I often find it amusing how people demand that the government allow them to “control” their bodies. I find that phrase to be misleading. Certainly your body is your property, unless it’s attached to another individual’s body in some way, but you never really have control of it. At best you can regulate its functions to a degree, but that’s very limited. Generally, when people have to go to the restroom, they have have to go and there’s not much they can do about stopping it. Your breathing and heart beats are also things you can regulate, but it’s best to leave it on automatic pilot.
The point is, it is arrogant and prideful for us to assume that everything is under control or can be placed under control. But my experience has taught me that sometimes you have to just lay off and let things be in order for it to work out. Unfortunately, too many people demand that somebody do something about some problem and I don’t ever think that this thought crosses their minds at all. Sometimes everything will be all right is you just lay off.