Where Did He Grow Up?

One of the repeated experiences of the past 8 years has been the sense that many of the people in positions of power in this country seem to have grown up in some other country. It's like they slipped through some dimensional rift from an alternate universe, where there was a physically identical country that had none of the same founding or governing principles as this one.

I had another moment of that feeling when I heard a quote from Missouri senator Christopher "Kit" Bond this week, talking about the lawsuits that have been filed against telecomm companies for participating in the illegal wiretapping of Americans. Granted, Bond is a Republican, and a Republican from Missouri, where they grow them up some real intense Republicans, but still, I was stunned.

"I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do," Bond said.

What?!

Where did he grow up??

Where I grew up, Americans decided that the government telling them to pay exorbitant taxes on their tea without granting them representation wasn't "something you need to do", it was something worth taking action about.

Where I grew up, Americans knew that if a policeman came to their door and told them to let him in, they could say, "No, come back with a warrant."

Hell, in the America where I grew up, there are whole buildings full of lawyers and accountants who make their living on helping people say "Hell, no!" to things the government has told them to do.

We "all recognize" that any damn thing the government tells us to do is "something you need to do"? Not hardly!

In fact, it seems to me that it would be harder to pick a more quintessential element of what America is all about than the very opposite belief: that we get to decide what we should do. We get to decide if our government is helping us with that, and overthrow a government that doesn't serve our purposes, and this idea that, if that government comes along and tells us to do something we should just shut up and go along? No frickin' way.

How ironic that a Senator from the Show Me state is advocating that the telecomms, or Americans in general, should just take the government's word for the nature of the threat, the necessity of their actions, or any damn thing it pleases. What happened to the practical, no-nonsense empirical approach that Missouri is known for?

Simply pathetic. What is wrong with these people?