Forbidden!
This controversy has faded in five years, but one thing hasn’t faded: the whole idea that the purpose of government is to “change behavior.”
By “behavior” they mean anything and everything you say or do, in every aspect of your life. They don’t mean just making sure you obey the laws and don’t frighten the horses. This is more in the line of how much soda you can drink.
Uh, those jerks up there in the private jets–could we change their behavior first?
After sin itself, humanity’s biggest problem is the government.
Slowly but surely, Americans have put up with more and more government interference. First, because we couldn’t be bothered worrying about it, second, because we liked such goodies as government dispensed and finally because, like the story of the tar baby, we had no idea how to get out of what we had permitted ourselves to get into.
Also, I suppose, most Americans believed that the government “meant well” MOST of the time and we were only dealing with well meaning but inept bureaucrats and politicians who embraced utopian beliefs in a desire to help us all achieve Nirvana. Well, I don’t think anyone, left OR right, believes THAT anymore. Unfortunately, we now have reached the stage predicted by Thomas Jefferson — that is, a government that can give you all you want, is a government that can take all you have.
Jefferson recommended watering the tree of liberty. The problem is how to change the behavior of our sublime rulers, who are supposed to be our servants.
I don’t know how to do that.
You do, but if you say you do, they will come for you in the night. I remember a joke about the good old USSR. A man living in a run-down apartment received a loud call that he must vacate his apartment and come down into the street. Sad and disheartened, he went to a box next to the door and took out a few small items — a toothbrush, comb and some soap — to take with him to jail. Several minutes later he met a neighbor who asked what was happening. “Oh,” he said joyfully. “Nothing, comrade, it’s just a fire.”
I believe we are pretty close to that scenario right now. I see no hope that our “servants” will ever “serve” us again except, perhaps, as dinner given our present penchant for “diversity.”
See the classic Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.”
Man these guys are so tyrannical…
What I find astounding is that people are rushing to embrace tyranny. I hope that they never get what they are after, but if they do, they probably won’t much care for it.