We took a cable car up the mountain for lunch yesterday. At the restaurant they have put in a wildflower trail, so we wandered among the cows with the lovely sound of cowbells all around as we viewed the exhibits. Most flowers were dead or out of season but the natural flowers outside the enclosures were alive and healthy. God I love metaphors!
At one point I was trying to read the name of a flower, and leaned backwards into a yellow tape and got a shock! It was an electric fence. Man, I tell you about the fourth time that happened I realized I should not touch that yellow tape or go beyond where they put it up.
Over at 4&20 there’s a debate going on about mean old Gubbmint and how it victimizes everyone. Big Swede, who enjoys privilege because his property rights are protected by government force, hates government.
Here’s a little example of how f****** stupid the US has become over the decades, even Orwellian: Imagine twenty thousand acres of forest. Imagine that government, some outside power that comes down from Jupiter, “owns” it. We all get to wander on and off, hunt and fish there, as long as we abide by common rules. As a local democratic force we might develop resources on the land while preserving it for future generations. We would argue like the devil, of course, but somehow muddle through.
That’s called “oppression.”
Imagine that the same 20,000 acres is owned by Steve Forbes. Signs go up, and government and private agents patrol the boundaries. (In Montana the Department of Fish and Wildlife patrols private boundaries for landowners.) Keep Off! Signs appear everywhere. Trespassing can land a large fine and even jail time. Though the wildlife is no longer the exclusive property of the king, we cannot hunt on the king’s land.
That’s “freedom.”
When the king controls the volcabulary and we cannot even use words to mean what they actually mean; when slavery is freedom and democratic government is oppression; when the king sets the table for his friends and fences everyone else out and calls it freedom, we are royally screwed. That we don’t know that, that we cannot even understand the concepts, is tribute to the effectiveness of the National Association of Manufacturers, who set off in the 1930’s to reverse the course of history and stop democracy in it’s tracks.
They succeeded. Go vote about it now and see what it gets you.
Piece of Mindful 
Justinian (the commie emperor) is responsible for the free use of water around the world. That includes all that free flowing potable water in Rome. Privatization has snatched up, with government help, much of what is, or should be, public trust assets. This battle is not new. Here’s hoping the debate never ends, for if it dies, surely at that point there will be nothing left of the commonwealth.
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