A month or so ago--just before the Republican primary--I was talking with one of the candidates about the telecommunications bill Congress had just passed which, among other things, made it a Federal crime to have a sexy picture on your computer if other computers on the Internet could retrieve and display it.
"Doesn't the government have enough to do already," I asked him, "what with deciding who can grow peanuts and making sure my lawnmower doesn't destroy the ozone layer and all that important stuff, without trying to find dirty pictures on thirty million computers?"
"Well", said the candidate, "you don't want your kids looking at such filth, do you?"
"Of course not," I answered, "but I don't leave my kids all alone with my computer for hours--or the TV either, for that matter. And besides, there's so much other fascinating stuff for kids on the Internet--like Disney and dog training and baseball --that I don't think they'd bother to look for naughty pictures even if they knew about them. And even I wouldn't know about them if the newspapers and politicians didn't make such a fuss."
The candidate thought for a minute. Then he brightened up and said, triumphantly, "Yeah, sure. But not everybody is as good a parent as you are!" Then he turned and talked to somebody else about how his wonderful new program would put more hippie dope-smokers in jail.
Well, that was a real revelation to me. There are so many Bad Parents in the country that the legislators in Washington need to spend a lot of their time--at $75 an hour of my money, not counting their secretaries and assistants-- passing laws so kids can't find dirty pictures on the family computer. There must be a whole lot of Bad Parents out there.
And of course all these Bad Parents wouldn't get their kids educated or immunized or fed lunch without the government watching.
But wait a minute. It's not just Bad Parents. Look at all the other laws they've passed. There are so many homicidal maniacs in the country, the politicians have to pass laws making it harder for my neighbors to buy a .22. There are so many fools who won't save for their retirement or buy disability insurance, the politicians had to put in Social Security, and spend lots of their valuable time fiddling with it every year. There are so many weak, compulsive people in the country, the politicians have to outlaw drugs, or else all my friends-and the kids of Bad Parents -- would be lying in the gutter with their eyes glazed and staring.
Wow, I thought, the country's full of 'em. In fact, it must be nearly everybody--except me, of course, because I'm a Good Parent. So I decided to find some of these people, the fools and maniacs that the government has to protect us Good Parents from.
How about my neighborhood? Well, a guy down the block seems to be crazy about flowers; he spends every weekend manicuring his garden. And I once overheard the lady next door say she feels stressed-out and jumpy if she misses her daily jog. My own daughter once got hold of a crayon in the kitchen and -- but no, that doesn't count; I'm a Good Parent. Not really very much around here.
Maybe they're all up North. That must be it; the politicians are just too polite to tell us. So I called my wife's grandmother in Pennsylvania and asked her about all the idiots and dangerous loonies and Bad Parents in the North.
"Well," she said, "some nights I hear a really awful noise, somebody practicing the trombone. Terrible." It must be really loud; she's getting on and her hearing isn't what it used to be. "Just last month a dog got loose and messed in my yard. But usually it's pretty quiet and people are nice. One young fellow at my church -- the one who married Bernice MacElroy's niece, you remember [I had no idea, of course] --was out of work for a couple of months and acted depressed, but he finally found something -- selling hardware, I think." No, I guess it's not the North.
Maybe the big cities, I thought, or maybe California. Everybody knows California is crazy. So I called up an old school friend who moved to Los Angeles a while ago. He lives in a big apartment complex, so he must be completely surrounded by maniacs and Bad Parents.
Nothing there, either. The best he could do for me was some college students upstairs who had wild parties about one weekend a month. "But they're real quiet on Sundays. I have no trouble at all concentrating on my yoga." He did mention the way people drive on the freeways, and the time a 4-year-old ran around the halls nude, giggling, while his mother hollered at him, but that still didn't seem like enough.
I mean, not enough to need all these zillions of dollars and millions of laws to protect us from each other. Or from ourselves.
So maybe the only real dangerous maniacs are the politicians who keep making up problems and then pretending to solve them with more regulations and more of our money, trying to scare us into believing that all our neighbors are idiots and criminals and Bad Parents.
And maybe the only real fools are the ones who keep voting for them.
-- Craig Goodrich
Computer guru Craig Goodrich lives in Elkmont, Alabama, with his wife and two children, in a house with crayon marks on the kitchen wall. He is the Libertarian candidate for US Congress in Alabama's 5th District.
Craig Goodrich for US Congress
Mark Thornton for US Senate
Harry Browne for President
