Give up your individualism

I read something very telling today. She didn't mean it this way (did she?) but its how it came out.

"If you are an American, I salute you for being willing to forgo your right to rugged individualism, freedom and self-expression..."

The rest of the quote is in the form of what car you drive. But the subject of the sentence is first, and forgo your right to individualism are the words that caught me.

And isn't that what a lot of it is about? Give up being an individual. The government will think for you. The government will regulate you, sanction you, make you healthy, pay your mortgage should you default ... you will become one of many, part of a group think mentality. You are not responsible for you, the group is responsible for you.

I didn't read the rest of the article. So yeah for riding busses and what not. But anything that starts off giving up my individualism, freedom ... that isn't for me. If the quote had been reworded ... maybe to say "If you are an American who's decided your car is not the source of your individualism, freedom and self-expression ..." Maybe I wouldn't have had this reaction.

But it just makes me sad. So many don't want the freedoms that founded us. So many don't want the personal responsibility of being an American. Of being free. Of owning all of your actions and inactions mistakes and successes. And green means envy, people. Green with envy. I'd say that many in the enviornmental movement are green, they want more. More money for themselves, more of what others have. They can't get it for themselves, so they will make me give up what I have, so they can have more. They will sacrifice our nation and our industry at the alter of green. They will be green until there is cheaper gas.

And if you think for one pea green second that GE, Ford, Toyota, ABC, CBS, NBC, or whoever think that their green logos are anything more than a marketing ploy, you are an idiot. If asked to give up their private jets to fly back and forth, coast to coast, they would say umm...no. If asked to give up their SUVs they would say umm....no. Their diamonds, their $1,000 suits, their plastic surgeons ... if someone told them they had to give up those things in order to help go green, they would say umm...no.

It's marketing. Pure and simple. It won't do a stupid idiotic thing to limit anything. Just like Myspace going "black" or Google putting trees all over it's logo. It does not accomplish anything.

But people feel all nice and fuzzy ... "Oh look, NBC's logo is green for earth day!" It wasn't red for Valentine's day, or gold for Christmas, which would have been just as arbitrary but celebratory of something good to the millions of Americans the. But this politically correct religion they can celebrate without fear of retribution.

No matter what the eventual outcome or cost to us is.