Life, Liberty and Litter

I'm no Constitutional expert. I haven't study law or all its ins and outs but apparently, somewhere buried in the Constitution, unknown to some of us, is the right to Litter. I bring this up on July 5th because of the massive amounts of firework debris scattered not just around my neighborhood, but my office parking lot and the neighborhood surrounding it, the lot by the grocery store, the picnic area by the pond near my house, the riverside park in St. Charles and pretty much anywhere there were people last night.

Fine, you want to have the right to celebrate the independence of your country by blowing things up. Great! But do you have to destroy the environment in the process.

What really amazes me is how most of society just accepts it. I mean, it's one thing to leave your half eaten box of popcorn under your seat at the movie theater, or your stale flat bear in the cup holder at the ballgame (or toss it out the window of your car, which I also saw yesterday) or even toss your cigarette butt out of the car window (out of site out of mind). Somehow these practices are almost acceptable. But to simply launch your legal explosives into your neighbors' yards or the alley or parking lot and leave all the debris behind is unfathomable to me.

Could you imagine if say on Valentines Day we all left candy wrappers on peoples front yards, or after Thanksgiving dinner we just discarded the turkey carcass and trimmings on the street or on Halloween we smashed pumpkins and left a trail of destruction in our subdivisions (oh wait.) Anyhow, most people would be outraged.

But not on the 4th of July. This one day of the year, the day we celebrate and remember how our founding fathers separated themselves from an oppressive king, how generations of men and women gave their lives to protect our freedom, how we continue to defend freedom around the globe (where it suits are needs), all so we can blow stuff up and not clean up afterwards.

Yes, I'm ranting. Yes, this is an angry Blog and I said that I would try to avoid these. But you didn't have to push the pile of spent bottle rockets away from your car door this morning just to get to work (or if you did you know why I'm ranting!)

I guess I just don't get how we can live in a country that on the day we celebrate it's independence and freedom, can also show off our worst underside of uncaring and total disregard for lawful behavior, leaving in its wake, spent fireworks, trash and other debris.

It's okay though, some illegal immigrants will clean it all up.