Big Plans

 Whenever anyone in government says they have big plans for you, it should terrify you to no end. It should give you the shivers, send chills down your spine, and make you physically nauseous all at once.

If anything, Ronald Regan was understating it when he said the English language's scariest words are I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. He was not exaggerating for effect, nor was he being hyperbolic. If it's any consolation, it's not just this government; it's all governments. Imagine if these bumbling buffoons who couldn't find their ears with both hands and a flashlight weren't just incompetent by their very existence but harbored ill will toward the average taxpayer who keeps them employed for doing nothing more than inhaling and exhaling.

To those who have big plans for everyone else, both in government and without, everyone falls into one of two categories: you are either a subservient, obedient subject, or you are an obstacle in the way of progress. Funny how the people who spent the last four years calling everyone else Nazis are acting like them all of a sudden.

There is this misconception that paper pushers, bureaucrats, and loosely defined public servants are the best this nation had to offer insofar as intelligence, ability, and competence are concerned. Likewise, there is an oft regurgitated fallacy that public servants are good, decent, honest, upstanding people. Granted, at least half are. I was at three quarters, but the number is decreasing rapidly. However, that leaves the other half, who are bitter, vindictive, and outright evil in some cases.

I'm getting to something because I'd rather you know it sooner rather than later so you don't live under the illusion that the public servant is your last line of defense. If that is what you were counting on, then you have no line of defense.

I watched a video this morning of a woman who did a happy dance after shutting down a brewery on super bowl Sunday. Of all the things I've seen public servants do to average citizens over the past year in the name of protecting them from themselves, it shouldn't have gotten to me the way it did, but for some reason, it seemed grotesque and cruel the way few things do. Perhaps it was the gratuitousness and needlessness of it all that struck a chord. Whatever it was, it stayed with me for the rest of the day.

Regardless of how you feel about beer, or microbreweries for that matter, the business in question was legally allowed to operate. Still, this busybody of a health inspector decided she would take it upon herself to make right the world's wrongs and shut down a business for whom that particular day was likely the biggest day of the year. She had the power; it was her's to wield, and by golly if she wouldn't do just that. If shutting down the business is all that would have happened, if the video had cut to black and we wouldn't have gotten a glimpse of her dancing the jig, perhaps we could excuse her actions as overly cautious or well-intentioned. Having seen her reaction to crippling individuals who are just trying to scrape by, this woman's pettiness and vindictiveness are beyond dispute.

So what's the point this morning? It's a simple one. By his nature, man is neither good nor noble, selfless nor magnanimous. It is God who imbues nobility and virtue in man. The less of God there is in any given society, the less goodness, mercy, nobility, or virtue you will see. Couple that with individuals who see you as nothing more than the egg that needs breaking in order to make the omelet, and you will begin to understand where we are headed.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.