Seth Boyes joined the Dickinson County News staff in March of 2017. In his first week at the DCN, he covered a train derailment near Graettinger. The tankers carrying ethanol burst into flames. Seth's photo of the event won first place for Best Breaking News photo at the 2018 Iowa Newspaper Association Convention and Trade Show. Since, Seth has won nearly a dozen awards for writing, photography and multimedia content. Seth graduated from Iowa State University in 2009 with a degree in Integrated Studio Arts. His original cartoons run regularly in the Spencer Daily Reporter and the DCN. Both he and his wife Janet hail from Clear Lake and have come to expect summers to be full of the hustle and bustle of tourists and visitors.

Highlighted Hypocrisy

Posted Tuesday, July 3, 2018, at 5:15 PM

While sitting in my house, listening to the 'pop, pop, pop' of the fireworks going off both Sunday and Monday night, I found myself not only praying the noise didn't wake up my sleeping infant, but wondering why we are so bent on restoring the rule of law while continuing to break it. It may come down to a simple choice all humans have made at one point or another. We will follow a law right up until it becomes inconvenient. We want to cross the street now, so we jaywalk. We want to get home faster, so we do 10 mph over the speed limit. Or, case in point, we want to carry on a tradition of lighting off fireworks, so we decide the law isn't worth following. We pick and choose which laws to follow all the time, yet we get very upset when others do the same. Some of us get extremely upset when people from other countries break American law...because that's a right reserved for us apparently.

So, while some may have gotten away with their amateur pyrotechnics display in the Lakes Area, know this. While we in the U.S. choose to break our laws for the sake of convenience and fun, many of the people breaking the law to enter our country are doing so for the sake of their families and their lives. Again, not offering a solution at this point. Just highlighting a hypocrisy. We do it because we know we're safe. They do it so they have a chance to be safe.

Perhaps it's fitting that we illegally display our pride in our nation's beginnings, while simultaneously berating others for breaking the nation's laws.