Whenever I travel I am reminded of how clearly and inexorably we are losing our practical freedoms, under Democans and Republicrats both. Even though airplane travel is routine for millions of Americans (at any given moment, 60,000 citizens are in the air somewhere over our country), we, docile sheep all, put up with indignities that would provoke a revolt were they tried at state borders on the Interstate. This morning in Spokane, a very nice TSA man confiscated a jar of peanut butter from my wife’s carry-on bag. A long story, but the kids in Oxford need to have some necessities of life restocked. The good news is that there was plenty more in the checked baggage, along with the chocolate chips. We just had to give up one jar, our small contribution to the war on terror. We each try to do our part.
But back to the main point. If they ever passed a law that required this kind of treatment at the ground border of Virginia and Maryland, with security officers going through the stuff in your van — “Just protecting our freedoms, ma’am,” with not a hint of self-referential irony — in order to head off the grave threat posed by bin Laden’s newly developed capacity to make peanut butter bombs, the powers that be inside the Beltway would soon be discovering what an angry peasantry armed with pitchforks and torches actually looked like. But because it involves airplanes, and airplanes were invented long after the Bill of Rights was adopted, well . . . Q.E.D.
But Republican candidates run to the right and govern to the center. Democrats run left and govern toward that same center. And no, “that same center” is not good news for those who would like to see some semblance of constitutional government. It may be decent news of the pragmatic sort for those who were concerned that Obama was going to burn down the Capitol and declare martial law by his third week. But it turns out that he, like his predecessor, has no intention of messing with a good thing that a bunch of folks got going for themselves.
The hardest thing about Obama’s election to take was the congratulations of Europeans. But the up-side has not been insignificant. Just hearing about the consternation of ardent leftists — as Obama double-crosses them on a host of issues — has been genuinely heart-warming. “Change you can believe in” sounded real good on the campaign trail, but we all thought the warranty on this new change invention was supposed to last longer than two weeks. “I am sorry, sir, but ‘lifetime guarantee’ refers to the lifetime of the product.”
A lot of conservatives were really worried about Obama, even though they were not great fans of the Republicans, because they preferred the devil they knew to the devil they didn’t know. But it is time for them to relax. Turns out Obama is the devil we know.