We Did Not Consent to this Government

While living in Los Angeles in 2008, I had an epiphany. I saw in a neighbor’s window a Soviet-style poster of Barack Obama’s face and wondered what red-blooded American would be attracted to such ominous imagery. The face wasn’t bad, it was the Andy-Warhol-meets-Vladimir-Lenin color-blocking that freaked me out. Around the same time, George W. Bush had signed a law that would, incrementally of course, ban the warm glow of the Edison lightbulb. For me, this convergence of events was the tipping point. I realized the American Experiment had failed. Limited government was a utopian fantasy. No piece of paper, no matter how brilliantly conceived or masterfully written, could defend itself against a central monopoly on the use of force. No matter how limited at its inception, the power would be nurtured and abused until it converted all useful social power into state power.
Once I had this revelation, I gave up hope. I concluded that man was destined for serfdom, perhaps camouflaged as a combination of taxes and regulations, but unjust limits on personal and economic freedom and the theft of the fruits of one’s labor were inevitable in any organized society.
My hope was quickly restored, however, when, <continue reading>