Beware of independent fruit merchants!I swear to God, if you are not happy to be an American, you are not paying attention to what is happening in the U.K and Europe. This poor woman is being prosecuted for selling fruit by the pound. That's it -- the entire crime. Never mind that all her customers prefer to use weights and measures they have known their entire life, and never mind that this is not international commerce. Mindless politicians and regulators will find something to legislate and regulate until we end it by taking out a pot of tar and a bag of feathers and painting them up proper. Push back!
Beware of Pantomime Weapons!
This is the kind of thing that makes me think it may be time to stockpile guns, ammunition and antibiotics in anticipation of the coming apocalypse. In the U.K. plastic cutlasses, wooden swords and toy guns that fire out "pop" flags now have to be kept in a safe box in a locked room when not in use. Oh yes, and when in use a "university academic" will be standing by to make sure no rules are broken. Push back!
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4 comments:
The same zeitgiest prevails in both the UK and the US:
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/01/nanny-state-goes-nazi.html
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C. S. Lewis
bs
C.S. Lewis had it all wrong. No wonder things are so f*cked up in the U.K.
If you think you have to choose between two evils, you will never have anything but evil. Our nation was forged in the fires of another idea (a better idea), which is why we will never be as easily oppressed as the Europeans.
Rober barons are to nannies, naggers, and ninnies as wolves are to irritating barking dogs. While you may have to shoot a wolf (something our Founders recognized and why the Second Amendment exists) you can train an irritating barking dog (which is why we have the First Amendment).
A political dog, of course can be trained through election -- a simple enough thing, if somewhat tedious.
But what about a bureaucrat?
Bureaucrats can be trained through protest. And yes, tar and feathering is just one kind of protest. But so too are 50 folks engaged in a sit-in. It does not take too many organized protesters for a bureaucrat to run scared. The hippies knew it, and so did the folks who donned war paint for the Boston Tea Party.
Bottom line: Push back in an sensible and organized way, and the bureacrats will melt like ice in June.
Screw the choice of two evils. Trade it in for one good.
Patrick
I don't think C.S. Lewis was advocating choosing one or the other, but rather pointing out the difference in outcomes based on the motivation of the tyrant.
The same passage goes on to criticize the moral busybodies: "They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
Beyond your initial premise, I think you're right on the money.
bs
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