Letter to the editor: Why aren't we autonomous?

Autonomous — word of the decade. Politicians and car designers are all aflutter to get autonomous vehicles to make our lives better. And cheaper. Trucks can deliver food from the farm direct to your kitchen 24 hours a day. No messy union rules. Did I mention cheap?

But I’m more interested in autonomous people. Wasn’t that the ideal that those pesky old white guys were writing about in the 1770s? Free people. Free to make their own decisions, good and bad, without the “help” of government. Well, to get all the goodies that we have, we do seem to have to sign over some of our inalienable rights to our protective government. If we don’t sign them over, then they take them. Without asking. Religion. Assembly. But those are only 40% of the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, autonomous people should be anything but cheap. They tend to complain, loudly, when someone intrudes on their space, on their feet, on their rights.

So what happened to all of these autonomous people that used to live in America? Did they cower under an unresponsive government that regularly tells its citizens to go pound sand?

Where are you?

Don Carrera

Penn Township, Westmoreland County