"Good government is that which delivers the citizen from the risk of being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently - one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified and more agreeable undertakings...[and damned little else]"

H.L. Mencken, On Government, 1922

There was a time, perhaps 150 years ago, when I would have been a member of the voting mainstream. Dinosaur that I am, I would have fit in well when people believed that the function of government was to protect its citizenry from foreign invasion and to make sure that their basic rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) were secure. That was, once upon a time in America, pretty much all the people expected from its republic. Believe it or not, there was once a time when budgeting money for a peacetime army was highly controversial, telling parents what they could teach their children was sufficient cause for tar and feathering, merely suggesting that citizens voluntarily submit to a tax on the fruits of their labors would incite secession from the Union, requiring gun owners to register and license their firearms would foment anarchy and prohibiting celebrations of Christian holidays would be political, which is not to say actual, suicide.

But we live in much different times today. We live in the age of a 7-10 million-strong (no one, including the bean-counters themselves, really knows for sure) federal bureaucracy which has its cold, gray fingers in every aspect of our daily lives. And that doesn’t even count the military industrial complex or the desk jockeys employed at the state, county and municipal levels. We are surveilled, counted, measured, time-stamped, monitored and, most of all, restricted today to a degree that, in times recently past, would cause every right-thinking American to take up torches, build ramparts and rend the government (and the horse it rode in on) to ashes. In a nation presumably founded on the sanctity and inviolability of individual liberties, we have sunk to the level of being, perhaps, the most constrained and conformist society since Stalinist Russia or Maoist China. This is not hyperbole, friends, this is fact. If you don’t feel like you are being herded and branded like sheep, congratulations! You have completed your indoctrination protocol and are now a first-rate Babbitt ⁽¹⁾ and the rock upon which the Church of the Good American is build.

The strangest thing about the prevailing situation is that this governmental, cultural and theocratic bondage has been carried off, apparently, without anyone actually noticing much less protesting. We have a petrified, boring two-party system whose candidates sound virtually like clones and promise the same state giveaways. Ironically, Americans, to this day, continue to believe that they are the freest and most unfettered race to ever inhabit Planet Earth. They are dutifully fed (by government-directed schools, of course) images of Nazi Germany, Communist dictatorships, oppressive Middle-East sultanships and even images of 18^th century England and somehow imagine, in contrast to these, they are remain anointed by God as The Only Truly Liberated. They see the gulags, the purges, the gas chambers, the veiled, silent Muslim women and the Lords and Barons running their fiefdoms and think to themselves: "How lucky I am to be an American, Resident of the Shining City On the Hill! Mankind’s Last Best Hope!" Even our national songs do not proclaim that we are a land of free people but that we are THE Land of the Free and, not coincidently, THE Home of the Brave. To this fiction, I say "Horsefeathers!".

When we examine our own tedious lives, just how true are these grandiose assessments? If one were to merely think of the minute details of our lives, we come across the thousands of ways we are lead about and funneled along approved paths of behavior. It’s the little things: If you ride a motorcycle, you are compelled to wear a helmet. Ever wonder why, exactly? Does this law exist to protect the rights of others on the road from possibly being damaged by your bare head totaling their car in a collision or killing them as your uncovered cranium crashes through their windshield? Which is more dangerous to innocent bystanders: your head or your head incased in a hard plastic shell? No, it is not a law to secure the rights of others. It is because the government feels compelled to "protect you" against yourself. The Great Father in Washington has pegged you, possibly correctly, as an idiot that does not have the good sense to wear a helmet and, thus, it has established a law to protect you from your own stupidity. Why should there be such a law? Doesn’t such a law fly into the face of the Darwinian concepts that have prevailed for millennia? If you are a moron and choose not to wear a helmet when riding your crotch rocket, why should the pencil pushing job-holders in your state capital care? I know I don’t but, alas, I am merely a citizen, voter and taxpayer. And, when, I ask you, has anyone cared for the opinion of those such as I?

If you want to hunt (except on land you own and I suspect that laws will close that loophole soon enough) you are required to seek approval (and pay a tribute) to the government. Why is this so? Principally because it pays the salaries of the game wardens who amble around - even on private property, if they so desire - to, well, make sure you have a license. Does anyone else see the circular illogic of that?

If you want to get married (God only knows why you would, but I digress), you are required to have the approval of the state to do so. Why is this so? Who, exactly, are they protecting from the temporary insanity you are displaying when you get married? Are you a threat to anyone other that yourself? Are they identifying you as a likely client for mental health services in the near future? Or, is the state simply raising funds with marriage licenses to provide cost-free marriage services to low-income couples?

And then there are the seat belt laws. Does the government think that they are protecting other drivers from your limp corpse slamming into their windshield? I ask you this: Which is more dangerous, your 5000 pound car crashing into another car or your 5000 pound car crashing into another car followed by your carcass flying through your windshield? Or is this another instance of the caring, nurturing mother state protecting you (who are too stupid to see the benefit of shoulder restraints) from your own dim-wittedness? Darwin, Darwin, Darwin.

We could discuss zoning laws that tell us what we can build on our own private property, licensing fees for doing work you were trained for, occupational taxes - i.e. tribute to city councils for the privilege of earning a living in their personal kingdoms and the like but, to cover all the silliness would take more time and keystrokes than I can muster. And much more than you could digest. I will leave these few examples the Freedom in These United States to suffice.

Getting back to the circumstances of my own region (a depressing enough prospect indeed), it is relevant to point out that we are a Top-10 state in violence, murder, rape, robbery, venereal disease, grand theft auto and (I am only guessing here) most likely bestiality, cock-fighting, alcoholism, drug-abuse, incest and spousal abuse - husband and wife. We are one of the most violent states in These United States and, per capita, probably the most violent.

Yet, with thousands of laws on the books for everything from anti-litter restrictions to jay-walking, law enforcement officers have too many other things to police than those that are actually a threat to our personal liberty. The definition of "Dilution of Resources": a cop is busy writing a ticket for failure to signal a turn at a 4-way stop while, two blocks away, a 7-11 is being held up and the owner shot. The end result of petty, useless, inane legalities is that when the police are busy stamping out brush fires, they are unavailable for the full-fledged forest fire raging a mile away.

In my particular state, there are innumerable laws that are based on nothing more than a muddled and misguided concept of The Public Good and, worse still, are founded in fundamentalist, evangelical, which is to say, Southern Baptist, doctrine. If the Founders truly sought a separation of Church and State, that idea fled the unfriendly confines of the State of Alabama decades ago. In the birthplace of "Bull" Conner, George C. Wallace, Kate Jackson, Helen Keller, Reuben Studdard, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, the theocracy is not merely in command of the state legislature indeed, they are its High Priests, soothsayers and astrologers. These self-appointed Cromwells and Keepers of the Public Good determine what can and cannot be done in the Heart of Dixie. Though we do not have a tax base that would support a first-rate school system (even if it were run cost-effectively, which it is not) or enough police to keep the gentry safe and the natives at bay (even if they were hard-working and diligent, which they are not), the Baptist Bishops refuse to permit the citizens to establish a state lottery or any form of gambling whatsoever though such activities would add revenue to the state’s destitute finances. While the neighboring states of Tennessee and Georgia siphon off hundreds and thousands of dollars from Alabamians racing across the state lines to buy lottery tickets, the Reigning Theocrats preach from the pulpit that gambling is a sin and leads to depravity, ruin and, inevitably, the fiery pits of eternal damnation. And the suckers, driven to the polls in church buses, continue to buy into this malarkey and vote just as they are told from the pulpit. While the residents of more enlightened states may have better schools and safer lives, Alabamians sleep soundly at night knowing that these heathens will, at Judgement Day, be excluded from the Holy Estate. They know this for they have been told it is the truth by the elders of the High Church of Alabama Holy-Rollers. We in Alabama may be poor and stupid but, since we do not allow Beelzebub to corrupt our state with games of chance, we will surely see the Kingdom of God. For many, that is more than enough. Alas, I am not along for that hayride and or a member of that congregation.

So, the point is this: America (Alabama being a prime example) is not the Land of the Free at all. Our land has devolved, tragically, into the Land of the Followers, the Home of the Joiners. No one contemplates politics and the dire issues facing our nation. The Great Unwashed care not for talk of creeping socialism and loss of liberties that slowly, relentlessly choke all signs of originality and individualism from us, day by passing day. To think of such heady matters might distract them from their deeper contemplations, such as "When does the next season of AI begin?" or "Who made Halle’s dress at last night VH1 red carpet?" or "Is Clay Aiken really gay?" You know, the stuff that matters.

We are backsliding into a comfortable condition of vassalage and blind obedience. We submit to pointless, moronic laws and their accompanying nose rings with which to be led around and never dare tug on the leash. We no longer have a democracy where citizens think and vote for themselves. We simply join one party or the other and vote for whatever swill they declare as their Party Platform. We do so, knowing full well that once elected, they do as they please and the Devil take the rest.

So, as you trudge through your next dreary day in the Great Republic, take notice of just how "free" you really are. Think of all the petty, superfluous and unnecessary laws that hold you back and keep you in your place. I think you might start to see that a democracy works only when people think for themselves and not as a member of any political party and not as a worshiper of demagogues. Unfortunately, America has become the home of a race who love to be ruled, crave to be lead and accept whatever they are told as the Gospel According to Our Betters.

It is enough tragedy for anyone who wishes for a better nation to know that the spirits of Washington, Jefferson, Adams and patriots long dead have been finally, irrevocably and irreversibly buried and forgotten. They have been condemned to this unhappy end by the lethality of "democracy-as-illusion" -- in brief, democracy, American-style.

__________________________

1. From the novel by the same name by Sinclair Lewis (1922). The title character, George F. Babbitt lives a professionally successful life, but is nevertheless unhappy. Lewis juxtaposes Babbitt's success as a businessman with his ignorance of contemporary social and economic conditions existing outside of his own family circle. His character lives with only the vaguest awareness of the lives and deaths of his contemporaries — he focuses instead on the drama of his own life, and the lives of those immediately connected to him. Gradually, though, he becomes dissatisfied with this perception, and eventually rebels against it — only to lapse back into conformity by the end of the novel.