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EDITORIAL: There Oughta Be a Law: Protecting the Masses

From Themselves Adam J. Smith, Associate Director, ajsmith@drcnet.org

As we near the end of the 20th century, one thing is clear. America has evolved. In the old days, people were on their own. Government, small in size and limited in ambition, was both unable and unwilling to truly take care of its citizens. People were left to fend for themselves, babes in the woods, vulnerable and alone.

But no more. Now we have agencies, hundreds and hundreds of federal bureaucracies taking care of each and every need and working to insure that no American ever falls victim to anything, anywhere, so long as the government can make them avoid it.

Sometime during this century, the government in its ever- expanding, nearly-infinite wisdom, came to the conclusion that what Americans need most from their leaders is to be protected from stupidity. This would seem to make sense. When the person who designs a building, produces a baby carriage, or builds a car is an idiot, bad things happen. But stupid people like these are pretty much accounted for by tort law, leaving hardly a role for all of those government employees and officials. Not to worry, however, because when it comes to stupidity, the government is the expert.

As it turns out, there is a whole genre of stupidity for which there is no recourse in tort law. Namely, acts of stupidity committed against oneself. Surely no one can sue themselves, and so without the government, Americans would be left to the mercies of their own glaring misjudgments.

But where to start? Well, back in the day, it seemed that a lot of Americans were destroying themselves with demon rum. What followed was a 13-year experiment in ministering to the witless masses. We banned the stuff. But this was not enough, the public being even less intelligent than the government had thought. So we hired more people, smart people, to help enforce the ban. No dice. The people's stupidity was so pervasive, in fact, that it was apparently contagious, with government agents, almost en masse, covertly succumbing to the overwhelming temptation to be brainless.

"OK," the government said, "we'll start smaller." And they did. Drugs, other than alcohol, were being used by a far smaller segment of the idiots. So they concentrated their efforts there.

Over the years, our government, already smart enough to tell us what and what not to do, learned to be persistent. So for seventy years, in the face of tremendous odds and a population resistant to even the most extreme re-education measures, they have added bureaucrats and agencies and prisons and laws. Because drugs are bad for Americans, and because Americans, even after all these years, are too brain-dead to know it.

Now our leaders are ready to help us some more. Smoking is bad, and so taxes have been raised. But that isn't working, so even now the rumblings can be heard from corners of the government that are ready, happily, to ban the stuff and to take on the task of adding agencies and people and laws and prisons. For our own good, of course.

Fatty foods are also becoming a concern, what with all of those Americans who are not bright enough to stay thin. And somewhere, in a windowless office, there's a government employee with a pad and a pencil and an actuarial table and a hotline to Congress who's making a list of other activities that Americans wouldn't participate in if only they had big brains like those geniuses in government.

Skiing, skateboarding, skydiving, rock climbing, eating raw seafood, eating raw eggs, eating rare meat, eating any meat, boxing, riding bicycles without full body armor, dieting (it's a gateway to anorexia), looking at pornography (they know it when they see it), reading stupid theories (they'll let us know) and communicating in any medium that the government cannot directly monitor are all on the list. And the list, you can be sure, is growing.

Yes, America has certainly evolved. Why, it was only a couple of generations ago when any old idiot could take it upon himself to make decisions and take actions that were clearly, to the discerning eye of the mercifully informed, way too dangerous to be trusted to such dimwits. Not now. Not anymore. Now, in the kinder, gentler, ever-safer America, our leaders have committed themselves to our protection. And, they'll spare no expense to do so. No matter how many of us have to be fined, or locked up, or executed. What a convenience it is to have all of these brain-wracking decisions made for us. Our government. We truly don't deserve them.

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