Personal responsibility an American principle
To the editor:
It seems like a local high school had an assignment where 16- and 17-year -old students all wrote opinion pieces to The Daily Breeze, published on Saturday, Nov. 28. Each of these letters seems to ignore the ideas of freedom and personal responsibility that this country was founded upon. Since these are high school students, I wish to assist in their education if I may.
The first letter from Kimberlee Bias was about not smoking. She describes herself as a 16-year-old “victim of second hand smoking.” Since being a victim implies having suffered some kind of damage, I have to wonder how Miss Bias knows her condition (if she in fact has a medical condition at all) is the result of second-hand smoke. It is hard to factor out genetic predispositions from environmental causes of illness, let alone to attribute the cause to any one environmental factor.
She suggests raising the price of cigarettes as a disincentive to smoke. She may be too young to know it’s been done many times to no avail, including punitive taxes to pay medical expenses for those suffering from smoking related diseases. Selling nicotine-free cigarettes is also naive. If one is addicted to nicotine, why would he buy nicotine-free smokes? The only thing that would work would be outlawing smoking which we are already doing incrementally. The problem is, that collapses the tax source that the government relies on to pay those medical bills. It would also destroy an entire industry, crippling the economy where cigarettes are made and tobacco grown, leaving tens of thousands jobless. It would also create a black market like during Prohibition.
The second letter from Ashley Nieves suggested raising the driving age to prevent accidents. In her letter she unfairly stereotypes teen drivers as reckless thrill seekers who flaunt traffic laws for the adrenaline rush. Maybe she or her friends act that way but it is unfair to paint all teen drivers with such a broad brush. Reckless driving is a result of one’s personality, not his age. Many teens are very responsible.The issue with teen drivers is lack of experience, how they will become experienced by being denied a license is a mystery. Parents should take responsibility for their teen’s driving and feel free to withhold the privilege at their discretion. Putting restrictions on the licenses of those under 18 may be reasonable but remember, many of these teens need to get to jobs as well as school. Its not all about drag racing.
The third letter, from 17-year-old Nicholas Saracione addresses canal water quality, possibly a non-issue. He ignorantly accuses construction crews of blowing harmful debris into the city’s “main water source.” First, the construction industry is closely regulated by government and silt fences and other erosion controls are required prior to even breaking ground. Secondly, the canals exist solely to allow for boat traffic. Period. Canals are not our main water source. Drinking water comes from wells tapped underground where it has been filtered after seeping through the soil to these underground rivers.
His solution is to have government put more restrictions on the people, limiting the number who can fish or boat and restricting where they can do it. No one is against maintaining water quality but why does the answer to every real or imagined crisis have to always be the government restricting more individual freedoms?
Allison Heath makes a good point about parents who over-indulge their kids but like Miss Nieves’ letter about teen driving, she unfairly stereotypes every student who drives himself to school. Just because a parent allows his student to drive the spare car to school doesn’t mean he’s spoiled. This is customary in families whose kids have after school jobs and help pay their own way in life. It is not fair to assume every student who drives to school has been given a fancy car by over-indulgent parents unless you have polled them in the parking lot or done something to quantify your accusations, including noting the make and model car they have. A 10-year-old Blazer or a 15-year-old Honda with a megaphone exhaust does not count as an SUV or fancy sports car. The bottom line is, I don’t know any of these kids who drive like maniacs on the way to school in Jaguars and Escalades. I do not know any kids who are snobs, think they deserve more than minimum wage or are lazy and useless. What school do you go to so I can keep my kids out? I guess my teen keeps better company that that. If Miss Heath has such a low opinion of her schoolmates, perhaps she should exercise her school choice and transfer to a better school, before one of the students she has excoriated assaults her in the stairwell.
Furthermore, restrictions on individual freedom should never be a consideration in a free society. Not allowing teens to drive will prevent them from gaining driving experience which will ultimately make them safer. Taking responsibility for one’s actions and being held accountable for one’s actions is part and parcel of freedom. Smoking is legal. Smokers have to take responsibility for what they do to themselves just as those around them breathing secondhand smoke need to choose to walk away if they don’t like the air they’re breathing.
Restricting access to waterways will do nothing to improve water quality in an area a vast as the canal system of the Cape, the Caloosahatchee and the Gulf of Mexico. Mandating how parents should be raising their kids, whether we can smoke in our own homes, restricting where boaters and fishermen are allowed and not allowing teens to drive does nothing to address the issues at hand. All it does is give government obscene power over individuals and tyrannical oversight into our personal lives and families. The desire to impose our own values on our neighbors is the essence of elitism. Don’t fall for it or you’ll be giving up all the freedoms this country was founded upon and once they’re gone we won’t get them back.
If this was a school assignment, I’d have to give all an “F” since none of you seem to understand the foundations of freedom and personal accountability on which this nation was built. We should all focus on positively influencing those in our own lives rather than empowering government to impose our own values on our neighbors.
Scott Davis
Cape Coral