It was the summer of 2010 and my husband and I were excited to buy our first home. We currently were living in a 400 square foot apartment and it felt more like a storage unit than a home. Our budget for finding a home was around $100,000, and like most homeowners, we were hoping to find a home with specific traits. Frankly though with a budget so low, I was not sure how attainable our “must haves” would be. We wanted a large garage, a descent sized yard, and a good neighborhood. We didn’t want to live on a busy street. I wanted the ability to have a space in our home for a day care and we didn’t want our home to have structural problems that would lead to a lot of headaches.
As my husband was working closely with our realtor, and I amazingly had some time off from work, we ventured into Bountiful, Utah to look at a few homes on the market in our price range. One of the homes on our list looked excessively nice for the listed price, but we thought, what the heck, let’s go see it. We arrived about 20 minutes before our realtor was set to arrive, so we decided to investigate the home and the surrounding neighborhood. To our horror, some of the homes in the neighborhood seemed to have serious problems. One particular home looked like the extreme home version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We found a sign that explained what was happening in that particular community. The community was suffering from a landslide that had developed much quicker than had been expected. Despite the news, we decided to check out the house since we were there. When we stepped inside the home, we found that the house was indeed being affected. The foundation was not solid, but shifting. The garage had a huge crack in the cement floor and many of the doors were very difficult to open and close. We were devastated. Devastated that we would not get a dream home for the price we wanted, but more than that, we were devastated for the community that was losing their homes to causes beyond their control. Though many of the homes looked completely fine on the outside, slowly, one by one, the stable walls, the leak proof roofs, and the newly painted homes would all succumb to an unstable foundation. The homes would be considered worthless and everything built on the foundation would be lost.
This got me to thinking. I, like all of us, have certain ideals, dreams, passions, and pursuits that are important to me. Many of the things we care about stem from our life’s experiences. Perhaps you feel very passionate about ending abuse, helping the poor, protecting the environment, recycling, protecting the life of an unborn child, finding a cure for cancer, and the list could go on and on. For each of us to go after the dreams we have, we may forget that there is a very important element that allows this step to be made. What is this element? The element that broke the well-built walls and roofs of the homes in Bountiful was the foundation upon which they which they were built. Nothing that was built mattered when the foundation upon which it was built was unstable and cracking. It didn’t matter how well it had been built, it didn’t matter how great the house looked or even how unfair it was to the homeowners who were losing their homes. Without a strong foundation, their work was meaningless and crumbled. We, like these homes must realize this. We may have many things that we are passionate about, but all of these dreams we have mean nothing if the foundation that provides the opportunity is crumbling. If we want to protect our dreams and our ability to pursue them, we must realize that there is something much greater that we must protect before we can protect our dreams. What is this element? What is this foundation that allows us to build the life we dream of building? It is freedom. For citizens of the United States of America, our freedom is protected by our Constitution. If you want to understand what conservatives believe and why we do what we do, freedom and the protection of the Constitution is at the heart of it. When conservatives oppose a cause led by a government organization it has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the importance of the cause, it revolves around the concern conservatives have with giving government more power over the citizens of our nation through increased taxation, regulation, and government oversight. We typically believe that if the cause falls outside of the government's role outlined in the Constitution, then finding a solution needs to be left up to the public. We as citizens need to be the solution. Sure, it requires greater personal responsibility, but for conservatives, the temporary benefits gained through government programs does not outweigh the loss of freedom that occurs because of these programs. Just like the house in Bountiful, when the foundation of freedom no longer exists or is seriously compromised, the house you were able to build, the life, the opportunity, the dreams, the future, can end up being taken as well.
A government powerful enough to give you anything is powerful enough to take it all away and if we look at history, the nations whose power is held by the few typically do not fare well in the treatment of its citizens. Is there room for exceptions? Possibly, but in general we must be very careful about what power we grant to government because once given, it can be incredibly difficult to get back and sets a pattern that can easily get out of control.
No comments:
Post a Comment