Call it what you want — Classic Liberalism, Tea Party Supporter, Deplorable American. It doesn’t really matter. These ‘parties’ all support the same basic notions about liberty and freedom. There are those of us who yearn to have less government telling us how to live.
If you’re a reader of this blog, you likely understand the viewpoint that politics is not so much about Democrat versus Republican, but about the trade-offs between tyranny versus anarchy.
Interestingly, this week two pertinent articles appeared from authors for which I have great respect. Both writers share stories about how government mandates and regulations have reached ridiculous levels. The first commentary is from Mark Steyn where he notes:
In the Fifties one in 20 members of the workforce needed government permission to do his job. Now it’s one in three. The original justification for requiring a government permit to cut another person’s hair is that a salon contains potentially dangerous chemicals such as coloring products. Making the license conditional upon acing sexual-assault training courses is not just the usual Big Government expansion but the transformation of the relationship between a private business and the state
The second commentary is from George Will where he observes the evolution of the nanny state:
Let freedom ring, in the nooks and crannies of the administrative state: One day a year — Lemonade Day — children in Austin can sell the stuff without spending $460 on various fees, licenses and permits. Twelve-year-olds in a Tampa middle school, learning about “how much privilege” they have, were asked if they were “Cisgendered,” “Transgendered” or “Genderqueer.” Two years after Emma was the most common name given to baby American girls, the trend was toward supposedly gender-neutral baby names (e.g., Lincoln, Max, Arlo) lest the child feel enslaved to stereotypes. A New Jersey mother says a police officer interrogated her 9-year-old son after he was suspected of a racial slur when he talked about brownies, the baked good. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission pondered whether a worker committed racial harassment by wearing a cap emblazoned with the Gadsden flag (depicting a coiled rattlesnake, with the words “Don’t Tread on Me”). A University of Iowa professor complained that the Hawkeyes’ mascot Herky, a fierce bird, is “conveying an invitation to aggressivity and even violence” that is discordant with the “all accepting, nondiscriminatory messages we are trying to convey.”
With the new year, many of us are hoping that the new administration restores a little more logic in its handling of governance.