Gary Ceres: Tellin' it like it is about thinking for ourselves!

Gary Ceres is one of the coolest most awesomest cats that I've ever known. He and I met during our very first week at Elon (when it was still Elon College) and... well I can put it no plainer than this: I've learned lots of good stuff from him about making mischief for the publick good! Like that poster of Hillary Clinton that we put up all over campus on the night before the 1996 election, but I digress...

Anyhoo, Gary has written an excellent op-ed piece that has been published in the Washington Times News (out of Washington, North Carolina). In it he takes an incident that happened while he was recently traveling across the state, and develops it into an essay about how it is that we no longer think for ourselves... but rather let politicians and dumb machines do the "thinking" for us. Here's an excerpt:

t’s not just the annoying shift of a light from a flashing red hand to a white pedestrian walking that we have willingly chosen to surrender our common sense to, but also the bureaucracy, particularly city-wide, that seeks not to govern us but to dictate to us on a daily basis the most inane decisions of everyday life. Why make such a statement? Well, firstly, of course, because it’s true. Secondly, maybe because we actually shouldn’t.

Now I am not advocating any type of civil disobedience or anarchy or any thing of the sort. As John Locke wrote of in his “Second Treatise on Government,” the social contract is necessary to preserve individual liberties. But when we allow ourselves to be ruled by the absurdity governing how many feet from a curb we have to place a sign, or whether we need someone’s permission to replace a door knob, or whether we have to beg for an extension on an absurdly high utility bill before a government worker, well, something is rotten in Denmark.

Click here for the rest of Gary's article.

Categories: civil disobedience, freedom, gary ceres, government, op-ed