Mind Your Own Business

Mind your own...

How many times have we heard this admonition to keep our nose out of someone else’s affairs? Plenty. Some might think it too harsh or rude to say but, I think it is pretty darn good advice. As a general rule, I am of the opinion that what people think or what they do in their own personal life is none of my business. Our founding documents state that we are each endowed with unalienable rights… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Basically… you live your life and I’ll live mine.

Have you heard the phrase, “that’s a matter of opinion?” Of course, you have. When we say this, we are usually referring to a subject, topic, or idea that does not have widespread or settled agreement. Gravity. The earth rotating and revolving around the sun. The square root of 64. These are not “matters of opinion.” These are considered facts. Truths.

Believe or not, people have differing opinions on many things, topics, and issues. Politics. Eating liver. Economic systems. Religion. Human behavior. Morality. Football. Some of these are relatively innocuous differences of opinion. Some of these topics, however, are considered serious enough to be written into our laws. Over the years, some of these laws have been changed or been eliminated. Opinions do change. Some see that as good… others see that as not.

One of the beauties of how our country is supposed to work is that we have the right to disagree. And we have the right to state those disagreements. We have the right to free speech… we have the right to protest (peacefully) and we have the right to not be forced to change our positions or opinions by coercion or force. We do have the ability to suggest, using persuasion and argument, how people should consider changing their opinion. We have the ability to try to vote in or out policy and law makers who do or do not share our personal view of various positions. We can disassociate and boycott to demonstrate our disagreement.

But, at the end of the day, another person’s opinion is none of our business. How another person wants to live their life is none of my business. But that works both ways. If it’s none of my business then don’t insist on making it my business. My opinion is my opinion. I can choose to agree with you or I can choose to disagree and simply tolerate your viewpoint or behavior. Hey, if you want to eat liver and onions, that’s fine. But don’t insist that I eat it or insist that I agree that it might taste good (it doesn’t btw.)

But it seems today that, when we differ, tolerance is no longer good enough. Tolerance, you see, is a “none of your business” mindset and behavior. Today, some insist on adherence to and agreement with certain topics, issues, theories, lifestyles, or behaviors. This is not a “mind your own business” mindset. This is opinion bullying. This is idea shaming. This is wrong.

Mind your own business is a two-edged sword. As it should be. Don’t agree with me? Good. Because what you think is none of my business.

The 2nd Amendment and other messy things

The last thing you need to read is another blog about the 2nd Amendment. There are plenty of others out there writing about the history of, the reasons for, the importance of, the reasons against...that 2nd entry in our Bill of Rights.

Here's a news flash. Many people are of the opinion that personal protection is a fundamental right. They also believe that protecting their home and property is equally fundamental. The reality is that there are bad guys (this is a gender neutral description) out there that want to break in, to rob, and/or to do harm or kill. It happens. Every single day. I have a primal instinct to protect myself and my family. I cannot adequately do that with a broom handle, baseball bat or 7 iron behind my bedroom door.

Here's a dilemma. In order to make firearms available to law-abiding citizens for protection, for hunting, for shooting competition and other sporting uses, those same firearms can and do end up in the hands of people that will do harm to innocent people. Freedoms can have that kind of outcome.

In America, we also have the First Amendment which provides some very important rights including the right to freely exercise our religion, to freely express ourselves, and to peaceably assemble. But even these rights can get messy. Sometimes the way others use these rights can be hateful, offensive, hurtful, divisive, controversial, appalling and inconvenient. But that is no reason to abridge those rights. Some think we should make some of these activities illegal. I strongly disagree.

There are many people that are very uncomfortable with all these rights. I think it is because it requires people to take some personal responsibility for their choices and actions. It is much easier to just let someone else tell us what to do, tell us what is allowed, take the responsibility (and the right) out of our hands.

When our kids were young, we looked into the idea of homeschooling them (which we ultimately did.) Admittedly, we had a little difficulty grasping the concept that we were allowed to take on this task and responsibility. Is this even legal we asked? See, we had been so conditioned that we did not have some basic rights...that those rights had been totally turned over to "the state" that we felt like we were doing something wrong. In retrospect, we saw that raising our children was OUR responsibility...and that included deciding how they would be educated. Fear not to all those that want to protect us and our children from ourselves...the state of Georgia still maintains some basic oversight. I had no problem with that basic oversight.

I also have no problem with there being some reasonable limitations on the use of and ownership of weapons. I don't think I want my neighbor owning and using rocket propelled grenades or true military hardware. But let's make sure we don't try to confuse the issue with a false and misleading glossary of firearm terms. For example, the 15 round clip in my Glock 19 9mm is not a high-capacity magazine but some would like to outlaw it.

Human violence is a terrible thing and has been around since Adam and Eve's son killed his own brother. If we are going to try to reduce the amount of violence (and who would ever disagree with that goal) maybe it would make better sense to address the causes of this human condition. But...that requires looking at the hard things... acknowledging politically incorrect things... making the difficult decisions... addressing what we know is wrong with all of us.