A tired theme

"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

-- Alexis de Tocqueville

The quote from Alexis de Tocqueville is timeless with universal application to governments of the nature George Orwell called ‘Nationalist', or what Mark Levine would call ‘Statists.' I titled it a ‘Tired Theme' because many have for many years routinely commented on the changing characteristics of our society, our schools, and all government bureaucracies, etc. But many people have not and do not want to hear it. The latest IRS scandals should leave no doubt we are now through the looking glass. American citizens are now intimidated by federal bureaucracies, and dealt with in very unequal ways by their government under the new targeting and harassing applied to those who are not for the ramped up socialist policies of the Obama administration. I see both George Orwell's prophecies, and Alexis de Tocqueville's observations of what he had experienced in Europe, now occurring in America. Americans now fear their government with good reason. It is my hope and prayer Americans will only be abused and bruised for a time, and that the indomitable American Spirit will survive and live on.

John McMillen, Sikeston, Mo.