As I grow older in this land, I become both increasingly bemused and fearful of our new-found mindset. When I was young, it was all about what was good for us as a nation, our personal desires and even individual rights took a back seat to the good of the whole at times.

It’s really the way our nation was formed. Our founding fathers put aside their own wants and needs in putting together the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These brave souls who formed a new nation came together with a brash, bold idea – democracy – where the majority rules and the government was of the people and for the people.

But these days, “the people” seem to be abandoning ship like a bunch of rats. We hear in the news of people like county clerk Kim Davis who want to put their individual rights ahead of the rights of others, rights guaranteed by the Supreme Court, no less.

I think a lot of this me! me! me! mentality comes from the creation of social media and smart phones. Eighty-seven percent of Millennials admit they’ve tuned out of a conversation with a real person to check their stupid phones. We have become increasingly fascinated with our own lives rather than the lives of others. We join groups that align with our own beliefs or interests. We post endless selfies of us doing nothing particularly interesting. We even go on vacation and post photos of us standing in front of an otherwise lovely view, as if we wanted to see what you look like on vacation, rather than the actual vacation.

We hear about what you eat and that you don’t feel well. We even hear when you have an irregular poopy or when you’re mad because your parents won’t let you do something that is stupid to begin with.

We are a nation of me! The Me-nited States, not the United States.

We see this, of course, everywhere. The gun rights folks think their paranoid right to carry should be put ahead of another’s right to be in a place that is gun free. Your rights do not preempt my rights, by the way. As my ex once said, “Your right to hit me in the face ends at the start of my nose.”

Now, let me say that my right isn’t usurping your rights at all. We all know that hitting someone in the face without provocation will land you in jail. The good of the many outweigh the individual rights of the few.

Let’s go back to Kim Davis for a moment. She has every right to believe what she wants to believe. She doesn’t have to surrender her beliefs. But she also doesn’t have the right to foist her beliefs on others. As a public servant, she is sworn to carry out the laws of the land. This does not mean she can pick or choose. If she can’t carry out those sworn duties, she should be big enough to resign.

In terms of guns, we already have lots of laws on the books to protect society. For example, felons can’t own guns. The father of the kid who killed his classmates in Marysville is proof of the wisdom of that law. He is going to jail for possessing the gun that his son used to kill his friends in cold blood. This is a no-brainer.

I am not a big gun control fiend. I don’t really see why we need assault weapons in our already violent, gun crazed society. That’s just my opinion. I think that when we sell a gun, we should have to file out a piece of paper that tells the government that we sold the gun to another individual. If we don’t, then we’re on the hook for the crime committed by it, as we are still technically the gun’s owner.

Crazy, you say? Well, we have to do this with cars already and nobody bitches about it. The bill of sale does not release you from liability. The transfer of the title does. My father found this out the hard way. Years ago he sold his Corvair van. He didn’t file the transfer as he should have within the three required days. The van was found on the side of the highway, a burned out shell. My father had to pay for its removal, because he was still the legal owner.

I see nothing wrong with laws such as these. They are part of being in a democracy, where you don’t have an absolute rights.

Think you have the absolute right of freedom of speech? Ha ha! Sorry, had to laugh here. If you post blatant lies about someone on Facebook you can still be sued for libel. Every law we have carries a responsibility to the good of the union. Yes, there are some pretty stupid laws out there. We are over-regulated in many, many areas.

But it’s a democracy. We need to follow the laws as best we can. We can’t just decided on our own which laws we are going to follow and which ones we are going to reject. We don’t have that luxury as we are the United States, not the Me-nited States.

I’m afraid that we are rapidly forgetting the fact that we are all in this together. We live and we die as one. For example, we are demonizing immigrants – even legal ones – in the false belief that they are destroying our country. If it isn’t the immigrants then it’s the blacks, the gays, the Muslims, the… well, just fill in the blank.

Rather than just moving on, we decide to even the score. We become our own Kim Davis, deciding to do whatever we want because it’s about us, not the amazing set of principles that have kept us free for the last 239 years.

If we fail to stem this tide of selfishness, self-righteousness and narcissism, we will fail as a nation. Our enemies will have easy work ahead of them because we will become our own worst enemies, turned against each other in the false belief that we are what’s important, not our nation or our fellow man. We will crumble of our own actions and selfishness. Al Queda or ISIS won’t have to lift a finger.

In the Emerald City, proud to be part of a United States,

– Robb