The concept of Building Paradise goes far beyond our soccer club Sarasota Paradise. I believe that it is our moral obligation as human beings to do whatever we can to make the world a better place. That starts with ourselves and expands out through our family, our neighborhood and our local community.
So when I named my newsletter Building Paradise, yes, most of the content will be about actually building our club. (If you are new here you can read the previous musings here: marcuswalfridson.com) However, since I do believe everything we do is trying to build our own little paradise in whatever scale, shape or form, there will be other stuff as well to compliment.
What type of other stuff? Well, since it’s my newsletter it will be stuff that I’m interested in, either by choice or necessity. Today will be the first example of this other stuff. But, we are always keeping to the concept and context of Building Paradise. Even today.
There’s a couple of guding principles that I have that are very important to me. They are the reasons why I emigrated from Europe and come to the United States as many before me. Most of these people before me came for these same principles, and since we’re heading into an election I thought it would be fitting to share them with you. In my opinion, these three principles are fundamental requirements to my paradise:
Freedom, individual liberty and equal treatment by the law. You’ve seen these words before and probably agree with them. But let me break them down, define them and point out current trends to see if you still agree.
Freedom - the right to free expression, movement, trade and the right to defend those from those who seek to take your expression, movement or trade from you. In shorthand this would be covered by the first and second amendment in the Bill of Rights drawn up by the founders of the greatest experiment on planet earth.
Freedom is also what has been consistently attacked since at least 2016 through the federal government’s censorship of social media and control of main stream media. It is also the one thing that does not exist anywhere else in the world besides in the United States.
In most other countries you do not have the right to being an asshole and definitely not the right to defend yourself. To be fair, this attack on freedom from the government probably has been going on for a lot longer, it’s just now where we find out about it thanks to social media, and especially X.
Individual liberty - the right to make decisions for and about yourself and your own wellbeing, which includes and is not possible without being held accountable those decisions. There is no way to have individual liberty without holding people accountable for their actions. Which is probably why there is very little individual liberty left.
For the last number of decades we as a society have been cuddling generations and protected those who have made horrible choices and not held them accountable. This has led to a situation where people seem to accept being told what to do and what others can do to them. The most obvious example is the forced injections of experimental drugs, metals and dangerous compounds by the government.
“My body, my choice” is a great tagline for women who want to abort unwanted pregnancies, yet they seem not to want it applied as a principle to all humans and situations. There is probably no greater cognitive dissonance in our society today than the people who in one instance scream about their body, their choice and the next second yell at you for not wanting to be forced to take the newest booster or whatever injection. And yes, it’s mostly the same people that yell.
People who yell, are not well…
Equal treatment by the law - Your right to be treated equally under the law as anyone else regardless of your opinions, beliefs or appearance. What I mean by this is that the only thing that you should be judge on is your actions.
Not your skin color, not what’s between your legs or who you vote for. And dang it I’m tired of hearing about what people like to do in their bedrooms, it’s irrelevant! In my opinion this extends to all versions of “the law”, including business, sports and every situation when someone has power over another. Bring back meritocracy!
After the political prosecutions of Jan 6 attendees (over 1,500 people have been prosecuted, all of them unarmed and most of them never went inside the capitol. Compared to 300 prosecutions for the BLM riots that killed 19 people and caused $2 billion in damages) and the made up charges (and conviction) against the Presidential candidate, this seems like another that is already gone on a federal level.
When I look at the upcoming election I see these principles as being at risk if there is no change in governance of this country. It seems to be very clear by now that the current administration wants to take away our freedom, individual liberty and not enforce equal treatment under the law.
At least that’s what their actions has showed and what they sometimes say outright. Always remember that the biggest predictor of future human behavior is past behavior. Regardless of what a person says. This has been well studied in psychology over decades. Also, please let me know when a government has voluntarily returned rights to people… I’ll wait.
As you may have noticed this is a subject that lights a fire in me and I am worried that these fundamental principles will be taken away from the greatest country on the planet in the upcoming years. The only ones who can stop it is you who are allowed to vote. However, I also believe that we can influence the people around us to appreciate these things by living and acting on them every day in our communities.
Freedom, individual liberty and equal treatment are at the core for me when I am Building Paradise. In my own actions, in my companies and in our community. These will forever be guiding principles for me, regardless of what the government says or does.
MW
