A New World

So Jr and I get in this argument about how much the government interferes with our lives.

My opinion (which I admit, I read somewhere) is that the government is slowly taking away our rights and regulating what we do bit by bit. Since each right or aspect of life that the government takes away, or regulates seems insignificant, the people don't protest. One day, America is going to wake up, completely immersed and controlled, and won't have a clue how they got in this mess.

Take car seats for example. A little bit at a time, parental responsibility for the safety of their own children has been regulated more and more by the government. The law gets to choose who is allowed to sit in the front seat of our own car. The law tells you at what age a kid does not have to use a car seat any more. Also, there are also these other 'requirements', that pose as a law. This would be like the requirement that an infant carrier cannot wiggle more than an inch when it is strapped to the seat, and it must be in the center seat in the back.

Now of course, these requirements are a protection for children. A society cannot guarantee all parents are going to protect their own children adequately, so rules like this can have a noble purpose.

When I was a child, the standards were lower than today. A baby stayed in some kind of car seat until age 3 or so. Children were allowed to sit up front. Taking your car to the fire department, to see if the car seat meets the 'standard' was unheard of. Before my time, there were not even seatbelt laws. Doubtless, these rules saved lives.

The standard now, has interfered more and more with the lives of parents and kids. No one is going to object, because who would want to object to protecting their child's lives?
At this point, a kid cannot sit up front until they're almost a teenager. Parents must purchase car seats for their kids until they're 8 years old! Plus, the regulations that look like laws, require you to purchase new car seats, for each kid. No hand-me-downs. That could put your child in danger!
Now, tell me, is the motive behind this really for the well-being of children? Or could it possibly be for the benefit of car seat makers to sell their wares? Just think, an industry that has the government making laws requiring parents to purchase their products for 8 years at least.
Can they make a law that requires children to take piano lessons? Then, maybe I won't complain so much, since I'm a piano teacher.

Jr is thinking from a practical perspective. The way our society is set up now, the government has to interfere with more and more of our lives. When you live in a world that produces mothers who dump their babies in the trash can, or sucks them into sinks before they're born (to quote doctor Laura) a larger entity has to take control, at the expense of people who actually do good things.
My perspective is more grass-roots. Any solution I can think of, would require nothing short of a revolution and new government. But, there's no human society that would set one up really good. We need like, God's government. I think that would work really well.

So I guess both of us knew the solution all along, Matthew 6:9,10 and 33. We totally didn't have to have an argument. But what's the fun in that?