Getting It Right-Two Rights Can Make A Wrong!!

May 10, 2007

By: Sid Riley

This column presents a non-partisan, conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items that are impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope that you will read the column regularly and that it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"When two personal rights issues conflict each other, a personal wrong usually results."
This was the case at Virginia Tech, and the conflict in rights in this instance led to the deaths of thirty two innocent students and teachers, and one deranged loon. The ultra liberal elements of our society, often led by the ACLU, have created a system of protection of the privacy of individual medical records to an extreme degree. The protection of these individual privacy rights prevented the school authorities and the gun control system from having access they needed in order to make correct choices. As a result, the entire school student body was put at risk, and thirty two lives were lost. Their rights to protection were thus violated.
It seems that the bureaucracy can never achieve the "range of reason" when they try to enact legislation to solve a problem. They either fall short by not doing enough, or they over react and go way beyond what is justified. Sure, individual medical records should not be available to anyone who wants to see them. However, authorities entrusted with public safety should have access to any information relative to the situation. The school authorities should have been able to find out that this student had a history of potentially violent behavior, and the gun purchase approval process should also have included a review for this type of history.
The public doesn’t need to know if a person has an erectile dysfunction problem, but they do need to know that he has a history of unmanageable violent anger management that once led to him shooting someone……if he is applying for a position as a school security officer. The existing system shields this information from everyone’s view, and sometimes leads to public endangerment.
Another issue that sprang into the media coverage of this incident at Virginia Tech was the gun control issue. Immediately the gun control advocates began screaming for more gun regulations.
However, this time there was reaction from the other side of the gun issue. Many felt that the carnage could have been stopped and lives could have been saved, if some of the other good students had been able to rush to their vehicles to get weapons instead of waiting for the police to react. Many people argue that if we stressed arming the good, law abiding segment of the population we would do much to stop crime and violence from the bandito’s.
We are encouraged by the bureaucracy to let them protect us, and for us to never attempt to stop a violent act ourselves. We should merely hide and observe and wait for the police to arrive and deal with the problem. Big brother will protect us!
Personally, I feel that a person’s first line of defense is still himself….not big brother. There are bad people in the world, and if one attempts to harm my family, me, or my property, I am still the first line of defense. It is up to me to provide protection until the authorities arrive. In many cases if you merely dial 911 and then wait and do nothing, the police will finally arrive and do a good job of putting your body into a body bag. They may even catch the crook before your day of burial…..but you and/or your loved ones are still dead! Good citizens should be encouraged to learn how to protect themselves. Gun control only keeps the good citizens from arming themselves and does nothing to prevent evil doers from being armed.
Other rights issues that often conflict are the property rights of a taxpayer and the rights of the "public good". This is where eminent domain comes into play. Recently greedy bureaucrats have extended the concept of this right to create serious violations of individual property rights.
They can now force you to sell your property to another taxpayer if he has promised to build something that will yield more tax income to the bureaucracy than you are currently paying. Bad Law!
Our founding fathers were very concerned about states rights vs. federal rights when they wrote the constitution. They did everything they could to assure that the federal government would stay very small and that all meaningful authority would remain at the state and local levels. Well, they sure lost that one!!
BUREAUCRATIC FUNGUS OF THE WEEK:
As previously discussed, the bureaucracy is filled with many species of fungi that choke productivity, create waste, and make government less and less effective. This week’s species is "IFINIDONSPENDUS SUMWONELSEWILLIS" (English Translation= If I don’t get that grant money and spend it {whether it is justified or not}…someone else will!)
This philosophy has grown in popularity due to the increased "dole outs" of public monies from the federal and state governments in the form of "GRANTS". This has almost every government agency scrambling around trying to dream up some spending project that they can come up with in order to qualify for one of these grants. When you tell them that they are merely wasting tax money and that the project is not really needed or justified…they respond with "If we don’t get the money, someone else will"! If everyone says that (as is the case), then nothing can be done to prevent the waste.
Examples of this are everywhere. Just read the listing of grants awarded during the past state legislature and you will want to regurgitate. Some of this wasted money also went to our area….should we be proud and happy or should we be ashamed? Think about it and maybe you will be "Getting It Right!"