Thank God for the wonderful Bureaucrats in our Federal Government, specifically the Consumer Products Safety Commission!! Without them, children everywhere would be dropping dead from second-hand EZ Bake Ovens aquired at neighborhood yard & garage sales. Without the intervention of these all-knowing, benevolent government watch-dogs to keep a vigilant eye on the sinister threat of used children's toys, who knows how far-reaching the threat would be to our little ones. We should all be grateful that there is a government agency to enforce these critical regulations and impose $100,000 fines (per infraction) on the vicious proprietors of these used playthings of death.
Yes, I AM being facetious.
If you were reading the above and wondering when and how I went off the deep end, then check out this story from Fox News, and maybe you'll understand:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,552021,00.html
So now the Federal Government feels it should be regulating the sale of used toys. That chink chink chink noise you hear is the sound of our freedoms being slowly chiseled away. I wonder how our founding fathers would react to the absurdities that we put up with from our Government.
I've posted this quote here on this page in the past, but I think it is important that I post it again because of who said it and because of how prescient a statement it has proven to be:
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison, the Father of our Constitution.
Our freedom is being stolen from us, in tiny, miniscule, almost imperceptible increments. And most of us happily go about our lives, heads in the sand, oblivious to the incremental loss of liberty at hand.
Should it really fall to the Government to regulate the sale of toys at a garage sale? Isn't there a certain amount of assumed risk with anything and everything that we purchase on a second-hand basis? Don't the parents of a child bear the ultimate responsibility for the safety and well-being of said child? If I buy my daughter a toy drum, and she pokes out her eye with the drumstick, is it fair for me to blame the toy's manufacturer? Or better yet, the store that sold it to me? How about if I buy it at a garage sale, should the homeowner be held responsible? And if the very same homeowner is found to be selling such a dangerous toy drum set, should they be met with the full force of a whopping government fine? Sounds preposterous, right? No more so than a homeowner being fined for the sale of an EZ Bake Oven.
This is a perfect example of the kind of idiotic excess we get when we have too much government regulation. I'm all for protecting children from danger, but let's be reasonable. We can't take away every threat. Recalling toys because they contain lead paint is reasonable. Recalling a toy because a piece can be broken off and swallowed is UNREASONABLE. A small piece broken off of ANYTHING is a choking risk to a child. And holding unwitting sellers at a garage sale responsible for selling what the Government considers to be an "unsafe toy" is also UNREASONABLE. That is why it falls to the child's parents to protect the child from such dangers.
Hillary Clinton once said, "It takes a village to raise a child." Well I wholeheartedly disagree. What it takes is at least one involved and engaged parent/guardian, and the proverbial "Village" should keep its nose out of their business, except in cases of clear neglect and abuse. This includes toy purchases made at garage and yard sales.
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