In America we say if anyone gets hurt we will ban it for everyone everywhere for all time. And before we know it everything is banned."
Its a common refrain: We have bubble-wrapped the world. Americans in particular are obsessed with safety." The simplest way to get any law passed in America be it a zoning law or a sweeping reform of the intelligence community is to invoke a simple sentence: A kid might get hurt."
Almost no one is opposed to reasonable efforts at making the world a safer place. But the operating word here is reasonable." Banning
lawn darts for example rather than just telling people that they can be dangerous when used by unsupervised children is a perfect example of a craving for safety gone too far.
Beyond the realm of legislation this has begun to infect our very culture. Think of things like
trigger warnings" and
safe spaces." These are part of broader cultural trends in search of a kind of emotional safety" a purported right to never be disturbed or offended by anything. This is by no means confined to the sphere of academia but is also in our popular culture both in
extremely online" and more mainstream variants.
Why are Americans so obsessed with safety? What is the endgame of those who would bubble wrap the world both physically and emotionally? Perhaps most importantly what can we do to turn back the tide and reclaim our culture of
self-reliance mental toughness and giving one another the benefit of the doubt so that we dont bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security" as President Dwight D. Eisenhower
warned us about?
Continue reading Bubble-Wrapped Americans: How the U.S. Became Obsessed with Physical and Emotional Safety at Ammo.com.
