One of the things politicians around the world enjoy doing more than anything is saving their citizens from something. It doesn’t even matter if the citizens need to be saved or not. The point is they’re much safer because of the actions of the government. If the citizens don’t understand how much safer they are because of the decisions made by their government officials it’s just too bad. Politicians feel you’re going to be safe whether you like it or not and too bad if it doesn’t make sense.
One of the ways politicians save their citizens is by banning things. Citizens may not understand why certain things are banned but that’s irrelevant. Without government involvement politicians know ungrateful citizens would just bring some type of harm to themselves. Then they’d blame the government for not banning what brought harm to one stupid, careless, clueless individual who has a decimal point in front of their IQ.
If you find that confusing you should.
The government of Australia has banned porn featuring women with small breasts. The logic behind this move is irrefutable. The Australian government believes that if you love women with small breasts you secretly love child porn. Now there’s something that is truly ridiculous. I suppose the Australian porn industry can only exploit women with large breasts. Maybe they don’t have girls who physically develop early like in my school when I was growing up. Isn’t this discriminatory to women who have A-cups and their life-long ambition is to do porn? I wonder if the Australian breast enhancement industry is part of the lobbying group that passed this law.
In Greece video games are banned. It seems the government there wanted to come down hard on electric gambling machines. Unfortunately their legislators wrote a law casting such a wide net that it included all forms of electronic gaming machines including video games. This was bad news for one young Greek who was happily playing a video game at an internet café totally oblivious to the new Greek law. This person was actually forced to serve time in prison for playing a video game. Other European countries have asked Greece to change the law to avoid imprisoning video gamers. Grecian politicians have ignored them presumably saying there’s no Greeks video gambling now and citizens are all now safer because of it. With this type of logic is it really a mystery why Greece isn’t an economic superpower?
The Chinese government does tend to think their power over its people has no boundaries. Since China conquered Tibet in 1951 they’ve had issues with their Buddhist ways. They decided any Buddhist from Tibet is banned from reincarnation without prior consent. Oh this makes about as much sense as an appendix transplant.
“I would like the state’s permission to reincarnate.”
“What are you going to reincarnate as?”
“The leader of China.”
“Denied.”
“The leader of the Chinese army?”
“Denied
“Sorry I’m coming back as the leader of China.”
“You could be executed for doing such a thing.”
“Well I guess I’ll be back a little sooner. Then we’ll see what happens to you when I’m in charge of things here in China.”
Saudi Arabia is a place that impresses people with their punishments from stoning people to death to cutting off their heads. They also have problems with many aspects of the western culture. As such they feel that Valentine’s Day is in violation of Muslim beliefs. In order to make certain citizens of Saudi Arabia do not send one another objects of love all florists and gift shops, prior to the holiday, are required to remove anything that could give the impression of celebrating the decadent western Valentine’s Day. Much to the surprise of the Saudi Arabian government their efforts have had quite the opposite effect. In that country there is now a huge black market for Valentine’s Day items. Lovers willingly buy red roses and other items for an average of six times the ordinary price. Human nature dictates that black market money trumps government bans every time.
Russian politicians have blamed their high teenage suicide rate on clothing. The Russian government has banned “Emo Clothing.” These politicians have gone as far as to say this fashion style is “a threat to national stability.” The Emo style of clothing can not be worn to public schools or government buildings. As long as they can wear their fashion choices to the local mall I don’t think most teens would care about the ban. The lesson here is if your society is unhappy blame the fashion style to save the citizens. This makes about as much sense as a tank with a kick stand.
I would have to use the previous examples as situations where governmental bans are misguided, driven by politics or just plain stupid. These are just some examples where citizens need more protection from their government’s decisions than from whatever it is their government is trying to save them from.
