Bear with me as I tell you a story. If you read to the end, you’ll understand the point of my story.
When I turned 15, my father taught me how to drive. When I turned 16, he bought me a car. That car came with a host of rules designed to keep me safe. My first car was awesome. It was a 1963 and ½ Ford Falcon Sprint with 4 on the floor and 276 horses under the hood. It was FAST! What it wasn’t was safe. No seatbelts, no airbags and enough of an engine that we had to put sandbags in the trunk to keep the rear wheels on the ground. I was damned lucky I survived and didn’t kill anyone.
When my children turned 16, I gave them each a car and a set of rules. I also told them how lucky I was to be alive and that their mother and I would probably spend the rest of our lives worrying about them. So, why did I give them cars?
Being able to drive gave them a great deal of freedom. It also taught them how critical it was to drive responsibly and how dangerous a car could be. I thank God they survived. Each kid got speeding tickets, each wrecked a care. All the three survived and thrived.
A car is a very dangerous thing. If used responsibly, it provides tremendous freedom and potential. No matter how responsible you are, it can kill you. Yet, I gave cars to my children as did my folks.
Opening up society in the face of Covid-19 is very much like giving a teenager a car. Opening up the USA comes with a new set of rules that, in order to survive, need to be followed. Not following the rules can lead to death and just as is the case with a car, the person or persons who die may not be the driver, but people the driver runs into.
Nonetheless, as a parent, there comes a time when you have to let your kids leave the nest. You pray you have taught them well. You pray they follow the rules. You suffer along with them if they don’t.
The government and scientist are the parents and we are the children. It’s time to give us a set of rules, an education and then set us loose. We are suffocating locked in at home. We are starving. The greatest nation on earth is going the way of Rome. Open up our society and let us prove we can be responsible. God help us if we can’t.
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