Regulation, prohibition, and the use of institutionalized violence as a means of enforcing morality, ethics, and social/political agendas simply does not work. Ever. I have written fairly extensively about this in the past, but that study that I mentioned in 2 of my recent posts - "75% of Americans will be FAT by 2020" - is a perfect example of government identifying the wrong problem. It has also been bouncing around under my hat since I first read it...
Our prisons and court systems are full and our law enforcement budgets are breaking our local and state budgets because government identified drug use/abuse as a threat to our society... As it turns out, America's biggest problem (pun absolutely intended) turned out to be fries and burgers, cheese doodles and soda, candy and corn dogs... from the likes of McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, Sarah Lee, Dole, Nestle, Tyson, YUM (KFC and Pizza Hut and others), et al...
The brutal reality is this: If a nation is its people and 75% of Americans are obese... what is so great about America? (In America people are executed by the government for Marijuana - as it turns out, bacon is a far greater threat to our society. Who'd a thunk it?) The answer: Our Corporations. The U.S. Federal Government does not care or concern itself with its citizens in the slightest - they are there to be manipulated into voting blocks to keep up appearances by the 2H1P. What the government does care about are the perfect enslavement mechanisms and tax collection points called CORPORATIONS. It was the advent of the share holder corporation and the enactment of the 16th Amendment of the Constitution (income tax), Social Security, and Medicare that conspired to create the perfect storm to collapse our freedoms into indentured debtors, fill our prisons, expand our waist lines, and addict Americans to government services.
America was a nation of strapping farmers and merchants and wiry shop keepers and artisans... and we have been reduced to a nation of pot-bellied Wal-Mart greeters, fallen arched Home Depot clerks, and thunder-thighed McDonald's drive thru serfs... but they all have bachelor's degrees! So they got that (and student loans) going for them... with a tiny fraction of the population benefitting (stealing) from the only industry the U.S. really has left - the export of the American Dollar and American Sovereign Debt (financial services) to the rest of the world. How did this come about? It came about as a result of the corporation and its unique ability to collect payroll and income taxes. (I swear I will get email or a commentary from some brain dead nit-wit that it all started with Ronald Reagan...) Why is it so many believe that the last 50 years represented progress? Because we can watch reruns of "Giligan's Island" on a 10 foot flat screen? Or go deaf by I-Pod? (Oh, I forgot... medical progress, right? Nothing comes without unintended consequences... what if these advances lead to overpopulation and an environmental catastrophe that dooms humanity? What if governments start to regulate reproduction and population? Wait a second... isn't a really, really big and powerful government already doing that?)
Most of us can feel this somewhere in the back of our throats... the way wild animals feel when a hurricane or earthquake is in the offing... all except the True Believers supporting the 2H1P. (As my good friend and Rabbi put it so succinctly when he described people that claim they have "no regrets": "Schmuck! You mean you lived an entire life time and never learned anything?" You folks would love Rabbi Moe. When I described myself as a "self-educated man" he sniffed at me and said: "As if there where any other kind"). The 2H1P folks never learn ANYTHING - because they know it all.
One of the benefits of living a long life, other than the obvious, is the perspective one gains on how much one does NOT know. But, from my experience living on a family homestead, I do I know this: the 39 MILLION Americans receiving food assistance AND the 20 MILLION+ collecting unemployment "benefits" would be far better off working as migrant farm workers. They'd have a paycheck. They would be thinner. The exercise, sunshine, and vitamin D would improve their health and their love lives. They'd be less stressed and angry, especially if they were too tired after work to watch T.V. (speaking of which, I never, ever had a problem falling asleep while living on the farm... "Lunesta", valium, lorazapam. et al are not something in demand by homesteaders).
We have gone soft. Soft in our mid-sections and backsides, and soft in the head. The Left argues against "Belief" (and I am not even remotely religious), yet we have come to believe that something can be had for nothing; that hard work, modesty, and frugality are passe; that T.V. is informative and educational, and that food, jobs, education... comes from Big Brother.
Today I saw a Bill Board asking "Who Is John Galt" on I-95.
Who, indeed?