Sometimes when a friend or relative asks me why I have such a big problem with the federal government, I have to pause and think for a minute before answering them. That isn't because I have difficulty articulating my grievances or because there are so few things that I have trouble remembering them, but it's because I have to consider the person asking the question, their viewpoint about the government and things in general, and then try to tell them in a nutshell what some of the things are that I think they might be able to grasp.And it always occurs to me that people who ask such a question don't really see too much wrong with the way government is doing things. Like anyone, they may wish they paid less taxes, but other than that, the only request they have of the government is that it do a better job at many of the things I'm about to tell them it has no business doing in the first place.
Sometimes I start by telling them that when the government was created by the people, who are the supreme governmental entities in this country who have delegated certain of their powers to a central and fictitious entity known as the United States of America, (and I may or may not tell them that this is a corporate entity as well,) it was created for and assigned specific duties. These duties amount to about 19 specific things that the government is responsible for doing and that it is authorized to do by the people.
Today, the government is engaged in at least hundreds of functions. Every function not part of the original 19 it was originally assigned to handle is beyond it's charter. Meaning, it does all these other things with no authority from us, the people, and therefore it does these things illegally and under it's own fabricated and unconstitutional, fictional "authority."
Of course, to really paint the picture, I have to give examples of what I mean, and how these things that are so obscure to the questioner can be so troublesome to me. One such example I like to give is the government's involvement in education. Nowhere in the constitution is the government given the authority to establish centers of education, nor to control those created by the states (which I'd prefer to not be involved in the area either.) Not only can the government not run schools, but it has no right taxing our income and then "spending" our money on such things, I tell them.
Well, I must be a madman to even think of such a thing. "You'd abolish all schools??" they ask on the verge of thinking I should be locked up as a danger to myself and others. "What would happen to our country if all the schools were closed? You want us to have a nation of idiots?" (As if we didn't already.) "How would we teach our kids to read and write!?" This goes on until I ask them something like, "If you had unlimited resources and money and geography were not an issue, where would you prefer to have your children educated? Public school, or a private school of your choice?" Most honest people will admit they'd prefer to have their children go to a private school, if they aren't attending one already. You can see where this goes. I ask them why they'd choose a private school for which they have to pay, over the "free" one their government provides for them.
We all know the answers.
So I've made a small point that private industry handles education better than the government could ever hope to and I can prove that the government has no authority for educating the people to begin with. But that really isn't a big deal and shouldn't bother me. I haven't justified my abhorrence of the federal government yet.
I may go on to detail for them government intrusion into commerce and regulating private businesses. The government has no business interfering with anything as big as AT&T or Microsoft to anything as small as your local carpenter. In fact, every business that exists has managed to succeed and possibly even become solvent by overcoming governmental regulations, fines, fees, taxes, permits, licenses, inspections, audits, restrictions and God knows how many other hurdles they can come up with.
And the government has no authority to impede free commerce in any of the ways I just listed.
A semi-intelligent questioner who has actually read the Constitution may point out that the government is responsible for looking out for the "general welfare" of the country, and these things that I've complained about fall under that heading. Then I point out that the government can't do one vague thing it is required to do while violating a specific thing that it is mandated to do. If the government is prevented from unlawful search and seizure, then it can't do such a thing under the guise of it being for the "general welfare." It can't forbid us free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and the right to peaceably assemble for the benefit of the "general welfare" when those things are pre-existing rights that the government is responsible for guaranteeing us. And yet, it does all of the above, daily, with impunity.
That's "against the law." It can't violate one part of the law which created it and guides it in order to fulfill an imaginary part of the law that is not elucidated nor enumerated.
Just one example of this is free speech. For the general welfare of the public, some speech is now illegal. (I have to suspect that they are currently working on a way to enforce laws against the thoughts that lead to unlawful speech.) You are no longer allowed to speak in such a way that you might offend another person or "hurt their feelings." This is called "Hate Speech" and is punishable by law. Right now, I'm doing nothing more than speaking about the Supreme Law as I understand it, and yet I can be accused of and convicted of "terrorism. Because I'm composing this on a computer and will send it electronically when I'm done, it also qualifies as "electronic terrorism," which means the government can come to my house and take my computer, monitor, printer, mouse, scanner and keyboard away from me and put me in a cell as if I were a threat to the society and should be caged like a real criminal.
There are many other examples I give people while I have the chance. Sometimes, I try to explain the 9th amendment. The "War on Drugs" is a favorite example of mine. It exemplifies all the worst examples of the government granting itself the power and authority to violate any of our guaranteed rights that it chooses and conducting itself far beyond the limited arena for which it was created, all for the alleged good of the "public welfare." The harm the government has done in the name of the public good on this issue alone could fill volumes and may in fact be a key component to the degradation of our nation, the destruction and ignorance of the Constitution, and just maybe, a catalyst for speeding up either the government's future implosion or a civil war. This is something the average idiot approves of because drugs are so "dangerous to our society and our children." And if my questioner feels we should have a war on drugs, this is where I point out that the government has been able to break all of the laws it is bound to and violate our rights with abandon because such people approve of it doing so.
The government exists by the consent of the governed
Unfortunately, too many people give their consent for the government to break the law. They want to deny their neighbor the liberty to ingest THC, but they'll consent to having the government bust in their neighbor's door at 3am, shoot the dogs and residents, tear the place apart and discover that the "suspect" didn't have the marijuana plants and seeds it thought it did. But that's okay. We have to rid the country of drugs, right? If some innocent people have to die in the process, that's the price we have to pay for a better society. If it takes a Police State or Nazi-like government to ensure our safety and inability to harm ourselves, then it's worth it. Right? But rather than the government doing anything remotely like improving our society, it is destroying what the people have built and could build even faster and better unimpeded by a bloated and armed bureaucracy. (There's a scary pair of words: Armed Bureaucracy.)
In order to form a more perfect Union, our forefathers created a central government. That created government now claims that in its effort to further improve the union, it must disregard and violate everything done to form that same would-be perfect Union. That kind of logic belongs in an asylum. The result of the government's efforts at improving things in this country also resembles what one might expect from an asylum inhabitant. Worst of all, the owners of the asylum have decreed the inhabitants sane and set them free to run amok among those that the asylum was designed to protect.
The people responsible for the death of the Republic, the loss of our freedoms, both vital and seemingly insignificant, the fact that we've become an international terrorist state, the fact that we live with less freedom and more governmental interference and taxes than our founding fathers did when under the English crown and every other governmental obscenity that we live with on a daily basis are you, me, and everyone you know or ever saw. So maybe my list of grievances isn't really a list of what the government has done and is doing to destroy our country, but more of a list of what the American people have done and are doing --- They're consenting.
I don't usually make it this far in my answer to the original question though, because long before I ever reach personal responsibility as an issue, the questioner has become uncomfortable with the discussion. They don't want to know now what the government. is doing wrong. They don't want to know why I'm "mad" at the government. They don't want the world they perceive as being "not that bad" to suddenly be a huge and uncomfortable morass of problems they didn't even know existed. They want to watch the X Files and Monday Night Football. They want to plan weekend outings. They want to see if they can add a new car or motorcycle payment to their monthly budget. They want their complaints about the government to be such things as the line at the Department of Motor Vehicles is too long and the service is too slow.
Isn't that a good enough gripe? Must they also know that the government has no right or authority to legislate, restrict and turn our right to travel freely into a privilege for which we must obtain permission only after engaging in a coerced purchase of liability insurance? However far I get in my answer, they end up knowing more than they ever wanted to know about our government and about me. And it's more than they can deal with. It'll tilt their axis if they let it. So the only way they can reconcile what they've learned with what they didn't know and preferred not knowing before is to conclude once again that the government isn't all that bad, but there's definitely something wrong with me. I've even been asked how I can even walk around all day thinking of all these things. Doesn't it drive me crazy?
Yes, it does. It makes me madder than hell. And it constantly makes me wonder what I can do about changing the situation nationally as well as how I can go about better informing the sovereign confederacy of dunces that are ultimately responsible for the problem. I must be doing something wrong in the way I try to educate those that are willing to listen, if only for a limited amount of time. I try to remain as light as the subject matter allows. I try to give humorous examples of the horrible state of affairs. I don't jump up and down or raise my voice or scream out the window that "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore." (Well, not in front of them, anyway.)
But the people whom I perceive as sleepwalkers almost always come away from this exchange thinking that I'm the bigger problem than the government. Or at the very least, I've got a bigger problem with the government than is called for. I wonder if I should present them with a well-defined, unemotional list of grievances that will better serve in my attempt to awaken these zombies. Something along the lines of what was presented to the King of England. Or maybe I shouldn't even bother with such people and should just let them wake up when they hear the sound of the rest of us when we're really mad as hell and we stop taking anymore.
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