I'm not talking about President Obama; He's just a cog in the machine. I'm referring to this large bureaucratic regime, this clanking soul-draining monster, this federal, state and municipal steamroller that is built, fed and operated by the statists of all parties.
Egypt's situation is fundamentally different than ours, for we do not suffer under a military dictatorship, but read this excerpt and broadly replace references to "military" with "bureaucracy," and you'll see what I'm talking about...
The democratic wave that has finally struck the Arab world is, among other things, a civilian protest movement against the militarization of Middle Eastern life. Old Oriental despotisms, for all their unpleasantness, did not fundamentally assault the civilian nature of Muslim societies, where men of the cloth, letters, the bazaar, and small-town aristocracies defined the “good and noble.”The tyranny we groan and strain under is a bureaucratic one
Robbed of ideology and military purpose (defeating Israel became a millenarian dream, like the ancient Arab aspiration to conquer Constantinople), Arab armies became instruments of political oppression and private enrichment. (Reuel Marc Gerecht - Weekly Standard)
FDR built a civilian statist army back in the 1930's and put it on war footing. Government was supposed to wage war on poverty, ignorance and those on the outside attacking us and our way of life. Instead, it now fosters poverty and ignorance and joins in the multicultural jihad against our borders, language and culture (Yes, I got that from Doc Savage).
This out of control government that cannot manage its own finances nonetheless lectures us on what we should eat and how we should live. It incompetently stumbles and bumbles its way through international diplomacy and blows hundreds of billions on intelligence, only to be surprised when a friendly dictator is toppled. Meanwhile, domestic surveillance of innocent citizens increases.
Fighting Citizens is Easier than Fighting Criminals
Governments across the spectrum have found fighting crime and improving the lives of its citizens too challenging, so it now turns on them, spies on them, regulates and scolds them. America's army of bureaucrats long ago turned on the people it was supposed to serve, and like the Egyptian Army, enjoys its perks and will not give them up willingly.
Real criminals with real guns are robbing and killing in Denver, but the Jefferson County DA goes after a kid with an airsoft gun. This is just one story in an avalanche of government-sponsored outrages and abuse. The EPA demanding dairy farmers treat milk spills as hazardous waste, and calling the dust they kick up "pollution" adds to the bonfire of regulatory stupidities now raging against the job-providers in this country. Our unemployment is government-induced.
Fighting criminals and protecting borders is hard; it's so much easier and satisfying to turn the power of the state against the people. Government is everywhere. They have robbed us of the private nature of our lives and our societies.
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
-Plato
