Egypt's worldwide wake-up call

It’s easy to forget, or take for granted, the rights we enjoy as U.S. citizens. That is, until we see examples of government control and dictatorship, beaming to our screens from the streets of Cairo, Egypt in high definition. On that inauspicious stage, the very real fight for basic freedom took readily to the spotlight.

In the United States, as in many countries, freedom has been forever perilously fragile. The United States’ First Amendment gets trampled every day, but not in the streets en masse for all to see, and increasingly rarely in the national media spotlight. Here we’ve endured a constant struggle to keep freedom of speech free, but the level of control of speech recently shown by Egypt’s government is unimaginable to people who have always lived in America.

It has been said that Tunisia’s recent public revolt, which resulted in its longtime president’s flight from the country, inspired the Egyptians to do the same. Last week in Cairo, after antigovernment protests broke out, which erupted from years of corruption and poverty, the government responded by shutting down the Internet. This inflamed protests to the fervor of violent riots, leaving businesses looted, protestors beaten and shot by police, and culminated in fires erupting throughout the city.

Locally, that passion for freedom of speech is smoldering at best. Not that we’re lacking in grievances. There are plenty of things to complain about on a daily basis — higher taxes, less service, big brother intruding on our privacy.

Each week, people can air their concerns during city council meetings. They are invited during every meeting to line up in front of their elected officials and demand change. But very few choose to get involved. In fact, we take our freedoms for granted so much that many of us have stopped paying attention to local government, or even state and federal government, as evidenced by empty meeting rooms and low voter turnout rates.

Unless a hot topic is being presented at a city council meeting, the audience is oftentimes small and the people standing up to voice their concerns are usually those directly tied to the issue — the leader of a corporation or a land developer. Most people would rather sit back, relax and know that government is happening with or without them.

To see tens of thousands of people fighting in the streets for their civil liberties, beaten by police for what they believe is fair and just, should make our inattention to our own government proceedings seem wasteful. Or, is it that our local government runs so well that we don’t need to get involved? Perhaps nothing can make our system better. We wouldn’t change a thing.

This is not reality. The reality is that we have become spoiled. It’s been so long since our country has had to fight for basic freedoms that we’ve rendered ourselves incompetent at self-governance, lulled into comfortable complacency.

Looking around in the community, there’s always something that could be better, something that needs our attention. Seeing people being struck with police batons and sprayed with fire hoses and still fighting back should be enough motivation to ensure positive changes are occurring in the community every day.