North Star Writers Group

It would seem that today in America, far too many people need to be reminded of this simple truth. Apparently, as children not enough of us reached up to touch a frying pan cooking supper on the stove to realize it was hot enough to burn our fingers. Or rode a bicycle barefoot only to wipe out in the street and lose a toenail. Or simply heard the word "no" from our parents often enough, backed up by a steadfast willingness to make it stick.

The inevitable result of the failure to learn these lessons can be seen in a veritable avalanche of ridiculous proposed legislation that, while seeking to keep as many of us as helpless and dependent as possible, actually shows off the childish self-centeredness of the legislators themselves. Here are just a few examples:

• Minimum wage - Do legislators really think they can substantially raise the cost of labor with no economic effects? And if so, why not mandate a $100/hour minimum wage so we can all instantly be millionaires? (Inflation be damned.)

• Taxes - Do legislators really think people won't respond to higher taxes by sheltering income and avoiding the transactions that incur taxation? (Thus reducing tax revenues and hurting the economy by idling all that capital.)

• Smoking bans - Are legislators happy that restaurants and bars have had to close down once government stomped on the owner's private property rights, attempted to dictate their clientele, drove their customers away, and as a result killed their businesses?

• Ethanol - Are legislators so poor at math that they can't figure out that producing as much ethanol from corn as they propose would exhaust both America's entire corn crop and its arable land? And that without feed corn and fresh produce to eat, both livestock (i.e. cows/pigs/chickens/turkeys) and people would probably starve to death?

• Global warming - And last but certainly most, do legislators really think they can wave a magic wand and control the weather?

The answer to all the above questions is a resounding "Yes." Politicians are so completely consumed by their egos that they really think their actions will automatically produce the intended pie-in-the-sky result, no matter how detached from logic, reason and reality it is, and no matter how unconstitutional, illegal and tyrannical. Moreover, they honestly believe we're all going to die if they don't act. Which means there is no stopping them, since to them, to not do what they want is to die. There is a word for this condition: megalomania. Webster defines it as "a delusional mental disorder that is marked by infantile feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur." Sounds pretty accurate to me.

Thus, in attempting to make all of us into children with government as our parent, these legislators have actually exposed their own infantile attitudes. Only a child could think the world revolves around him, that everything he does and says is so vitally important. Only a child could have such a large disconnect between his own actions and the obvious consequences thereof. And only a child could so desperately and dishonestly try to wriggle off the hook when he is inevitably held to account. (Compare the excuse-making of a child caught in the act with a politician at re-election time.) Therefore, even if it were at all moral to have government act in loco parentis, politicians have proven beyond any doubt that they are completely unfit for the job.

And lest I unfairly smear perfectly wonderful children all over America by comparing them to politicians, let’s acknowledge that with adequate parental guidance they will invariably grow out of their temporary youthful delusions. I can offer no such optimistic prognosis for the powers-that-be. For the time being at least, the inmates are firmly in charge of the asylum. It remains to be seen if and when these spoiled brats will ever get an overdue and much-deserved disciplining from America's real adults, who first must learn a similar lesson for themselves. This is what you get when you elect overgrown children. If we cannot see that, perhaps our government is all too representative.

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