Enough Government Intrusion

Dr. Michael Ford

14 February 2007

            Have you had enough intrusion into your life by the little dictators in government who think they know how best to look out for you? Right now on the Left Coast we have a little Mao who wants to make criminals out of parents who don’t go to parent-teacher meetings. You know, the appointments you don’t make dictating times without concern for your schedule. Then on the Wrong Coast a state Stalin convinced banning cell phones, iPods, BlackBerrys and the like, while crossing the streets, is essential to the survival of the human race.

How have we, in the land of the free and home of the brave, gotten into this mess? The one of over regulation I mean. Perhaps it began with requiring people who rode motorcycles to wear helmets? After all, riding a cycle without a helmet is dumb, and those “hell’s angels” types need reigning in. Now in many places you can’t ride a bicycle without a helmet.

            When I left the USA in 1979, you could order seats for open beds in truck like vehicles. By 1989, in many places it was illegal to ride in the open bed of a truck. I am sure people got hurt falling out of trucks from time to time, but not many. The only person I ever knew who got hurt was a drunk who fell backwards off a running board. But generations of kids are being denied wonderful summertime experiences riding in the back of pickups because of government overprotection.

            Are all these protections misguided? Not by a long shot. But the point is there has to be and end of government intrusion into life otherwise living becomes so regulated it is no longer enjoyable. Already, for most people, much of life is spent “paying the freight” of getting from this month to next. Regulated life becomes barren of freedom when rules for every area of life are made by men. But I think there is a malevolent, not benign spirit, at work behind the regulating of people. A spirit that has an ultimate purpose in mind! Free people have to be conditioned to be enslaved through incremental encroachment otherwise they rise up in arms to resist. Take away self-determination in small ways till all people are controlled!…for their own good?