LOCAL ANGLES: LASSIE-BEATERS AND THE LEVIATHAN STATE

Friedrich Hayek once wrote, "The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good." The dictionary defines leviathan as "anything of immense size and power." Certainly in America today there are abundant examples of the leviathan state reaching into every conceivable nook and cranny of public life. A recent incident in Wisconsin provides a good illustration.

According to a recent Associated Press story, a 73-year-old dog dealer from Wisconsin permanently lost his federal license for violating the Animal Welfare Act. Does anyone else think it absurd that our nation -- supposedly the paragon of freedom and liberty in the world -- requires dog dealers to acquire a federal license? But absurdities abound in this story.

It seems Ervin Stebane, the dog dealer, got into trouble after he was depicted in a tabloid television show shooting a dog for an immigrant couple from Southeast Asia. Although state cruelty charges were dismissed -- Stebane's attorney claimed the couple had been hired by an animal rights group to entrap Stebane -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture made a federal case based on something called the Animal Welfare Act. The law was passed in 1966 for arguably sound reasons. Of course -- as with most laws -- the measure has been amended several times since. Any bets on whether the law has become less intrusive with time?

The federal complaint did not focus on the dog-killing (should we call it murder?), but rather on other violations, covering everything from record keeping to the housing and physical health of the animals. The USDA investigated the complaint through its "Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service" (plant health?). You would think this agency's purpose is to ensure sanitary conditions where livestock and plants are produced, with the idea that the products will end up on our dinner tables. But in Wisconsin at least, it seems they're investigating dog dealers who deprive Fido of a warm pillow and yummy dog biscuits. Nobody likes a Lassie-beater, but what compelling interest does the federal government have in chasing down sleazy animal breeders?

This case is just one example of an over-reaching federal government involved in matters best resolved by an unfettered market that serves the interests of all involved. Not only does the leviathan state continually deprive us of our freedoms, it has spawned a dazed public unable to see how the handouts it so greedily accepts or the grievances it so readily airs nourish this monster we call the government.

On the one hand, we complain about ever-rising taxes and regulations that deprive us our liberty. We point to out-of-control pork-barrel spending and denounce our inefficient, debt-ridden government. On the other hand, we see a problem, and demand that the state correct it. What ever happened to a citizenry comprised of free-thinking and unencumbered individuals willing to tackle their own problems? We can't have it both ways, folks. Either we relinquish our claims to the bacon our elected officials bring home or we stop complaining about the government's reach into our lives.

The great 19th century French philosopher, Frederick Bastiat, wrote: "People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them."

Columnist Jeffrey Hart refers to liberal government, "throwing off all restraints" as a "hog wallow -- the football of special interests." Another contemporary writer, P.J. O'Rourke, asks in his book "Parliament of Whores," "What is this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense hatched from the simple human desire for civic order? How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?" How indeed.