Over the weekend, I reread a handful of Isaac Asimov novels. Most of them deal with robots, all of whom seem ironically enough interested in becoming more human. In fact, I can’t recall any story in which the robot does not desire more humanity; I actually grew tired of the focus on Commander Data’s quest for humanity. It is the desire of any automaton apparently to find increased liberty through life.
At the same time that science fiction and philosophy endorse enlargement of the soul, government applies greater constraints upon it. They ignore the notion that once constrained we will “yearn to breathe free” and break free and return to a greater degree of liberty. Politicians seem to wish we were robots- taking orders, accomplishing tasks, asking nothing, and allowing ourselves to be abused like the servants in stories that robots usually appear to be. Elitists want us going through life lame-brained, not asking any questions, not acting of our own volition, waiting for the government to come around and tell us what to eat and where to live and whom to take to wife (or husband or whatever). They educate you what to think rather than how, report half the truth without the other half to back it up, and fight every effort they can at self reliance.
I heard from a reputable source about a series of efforts taken against my Faith by the government that attest to this. I call upon my elected representatives to look into this. My Faith has historically shipped a huge amount of goods overseas to disaster areas as well as to domestic sites without any remuneration or assistance from FEMA. When Germany surrendered, George Albert Smith went to Harry Truman and offered help; Truman asked when it could be ready, and Smith told him it already was. Meanwhile, the government has attempted to force the Church to put the milk from their Missouri dairy into the general milk population. Meanwhile, the government has required that anyone working in the dry pack cannery go through a training and certification process. In fact, you can’t even touch foodstuffs anymore without showing certificates out the wazoo that show you have been trained to handle food, even if you’re sending it to war-torn Somalia. I used to work at the storehouse Friday afternoons in graduate school giving away food to people, but I don’t think the government will let me anymore. I used to give out food to the homeless at Owens and Las Vegas Blvd, until the North Las Vegas police shut that down (I don’t blame the police; I smell politicians). After the tornadoes in OK, the government came through and confiscated food from people who had more than two weeks’ supply on the auspice that they were “hoarding”. The church was able to resist that, but only just. One of the highlights of high school was when a dozen of us from my congregation traveled to hurricane-ravaged areas to help. I think those days may be limited because I’m not a licensed contractor.
The government does not want us to help anyone, including ourselves. They want us reliant on them. Their egos are so big that they want to BE gods. It reminds me of the woman I helped for a while in Vienna who went to Tibet with donations from good denizens of Austria and told the Tibetans that the gifts were from HER. She didn’t build that. Like that woman, too many people in government want you to pray to them. You can’t go hunt and fish to feed your family without a license, but you can vote and collect welfare without one, particularly if you speak Spanish. It’s right out of the dark ages of medieval Britannia, when John Lackland made it illegal to kill the “king’s deer”. I’m sorry, but before there was a Congress, there were deer, so the deer don’t belong to Congress. I’m afraid to stock up; if you look in my pantry, I have more than two weeks’ because I know that Las Vegas doesn’t produce enough of anything to be reliable in a disaster. So, I have toilet paper and canned goods and water and other supplies far beyond my needs so that I can help people I know. I had to fight the HOA to put a garden in MY BACK YARD, not because I want to live off of it but because I love the superior taste and quality of home-grown produce. I worry that keeping that produce off the market will “affect commerce”, which is another joke supreme court decision (Wickard v Filburn).
Instead of that, the government wants to waste and wear out my substance propping up losers. We waste an inordinate amount of substance and time propping up the weakest among us so that we don’t seem inhuman. Most of my students want to go into health care where their clients will demand the very best of care, even after some of them abused and neglected their own responsibility to care for their own health or in many cases actively wasted it away. It is however actually inhuman to take from a father the bread he stores for his own children and give it to those of a stranger. I remember growing up the story of the grasshopper and the ant; the grasshopper didn’t prepare, but nobody forced the ants to share. Moreover, as politicians profess their Christianity, I remind them of the Parable of the Foolish Virgins; the Wise didn’t give them of their oil; the foolish were foolish because they didn’t plan ahead. As a scout, I was taught to plan ahead with clichés like “failing to prepare is preparing to fail”, but I believed that and live my life so that I am prepared. With 76% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, I am appalled, but my savings would be gone in an hour if they took it to supplement my neighbors. This just delays the suffering of everyone else and makes mine immediate. This deserves careful scrutiny.
You would think the government would want people to be able to handle things without their help. The only way I can conceive that having us reliant on them is because it gives government power over us. It evinces a spirit of abject insecurity for one groups security to be dependent on the abject lack thereof in their neighbors. I have seen with my own eyes how long some people must wait without relief for the government to finally get around to helping them. You see, the government primarily helps the people who have means and materials to continue to prop up the politicians. Government has become a self-licking ice cream cone that is only interested in more of itself. Wrote the patriot Thomas Paine “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.” Government truly is a mode made necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world. Let us alone, and true Americans will fight any evil, right any wrong, feed the homeless, clothe the destitute and reach out and restore their neighbors and neighborhoods. That’s why you don’t hear about FEMA in “flyover country”; the good folks there don’t need government because they have the society and substance of heaven.
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