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I Know An Old Lady...

For some reason, lately I've had that children's song "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly" in my head. I do pest control, and I somehow got it in my head when I was at a particular house approximately four months ago, and have gotten it back every single time I've serviced that house. So I've been mulling the lyrics over on a regular basis. The lady, for some inexplicable reason, swallowed a fly, and rather than doing the sensible thing by shrugging her shoulders and saying "Heh, it's just extra protein" and allowing the fly to take its natural course, she goes on to swallow successively larger animals, each in an attempt to deal with the previous animal, until she finally kills herself by swallowing something truly monstrous.

I had the sudden realization that this song could be considered analogously descriptive of how our society often attempts to solve problems. The problem is caused, in the first place, by society "swallowing" something that isn't good for it, adopting some error or injustice that begins to cause problems. However, rather than simply dealing with the injustice (because the injustice is perpetrated by the very people charged with dealing with injustice), a larger error is adopted in an attempt to correct the smaller error. This, of course, causes even larger problems, and it's almost as if people say to themselves "well, two wrongs may have failed to make a right, but hey, third time's a charm, right?"

Errors and problems compound, as at each stage, rather than dealing with the root cause of the problems, an even larger error is adopted to solve the problem. The cycle has been going on for so long we don't even remember how it started; we don' t know "why she swallowed the fly." At this rate, however, we'll swallow our horse, and then we'll be dead, of course!

It's kind of what it means to me to be a Free Liberal. So many people either close their eyes to social problems, or seeing them, agitate for more and more government control. I look and I ask, where could government control be contributing to the problem? How can this social problem be solved with freedom? I don't, upon seeing the gastrointestinal problems caused by the swallowing of a live bird, seek out a cat to send after it. Rather, I wonder if the bird might be removed.

Posted by Daryl Sawyer on August 28, 2007 01:26 AM |

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Free-for-all (frfr-ôl) -- n. A disorderly fight, argument, or competition in which everyone present participates.

from Dictionary.com



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