A Guest Article.

The Sage of Baltimore
by Charley Reese

The sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, once observed,
"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a
false-face for the urge to rule it."

We could even indulge that old habit of division by
saying that people are divided into two classes –
those who are willing to leave others alone to pursue
their own happiness, and those who have a burning itch
to tell others how they should do it and, if they
don't listen, force them to follow instructions.

I've seen this in my own life. Even under the
influence of spirits, I never imagined that disliking
the flavor of brussels sprouts could spark anger in
another person, but as it turned out, I married just
such a person. She had a great many virtues, but it
did upset her to find out that people had different
tastes and opinions about things.

She thought, bless her memory, that her firm statement
that brussels sprouts were good was a universal and
indisputable fact. It frustrated her greatly when I
insisted that it was merely a matter of opinion, and
in my opinion they were not good and that their flavor
resembled the smell of sewage.

My philosophy, no doubt a result of my Celtic genes,
is that I will do what I like and other people are
free to do what they like. Differences of opinion,
tastes, even ideology don't bother me. I'm even
reluctant to give advice when people ask for it.

In fact, since the traditional definitions of liberals
and conservatives have been made obsolete by modernity
and its muddy thinking, we can even redefine them. A
liberal is person with a burning itch to run other
people's lives; a conservative has no desire to do so.

Look at our current society. People who think smoking
is bad are not content to quit the habit themselves;
they wish to forcibly prevent others from smoking.
People who think eating trans fat is bad are not
content to avoid it themselves; they want to ban it.
People who think owning a gun is a bad thing want to
prevent others from owning guns. People who think
using certain drugs is bad want to prevent others from
using them. People who dislike the Confederate battle
flag wish to prevent those who like it from displaying
it. And so on and so forth.

In every case, prevention is translated into a denial
of choice, and what is freedom but the liberty of
making one's own choices? The more areas of our lives
in which we are denied the freedom to choose, the less
liberty there is. Totalitarianism is the denial of all
choices. We haven't gotten to that point yet, but we
seem to be steadily marching in that direction, led,
of course, by liberal reformers who wish to save us
from ourselves. That's why I say that
authoritarianism, not democracy, is the direction the
world is headed toward.

Truly, I've never understood the psychology of those
people who want to control the lives of other people.
Granted, parents have to provide some guidance to
their children, but even that, I think, should be
limited to survival skills and a basic moral code.
Children come into the world their own persons, and
parents have no right to force them into some kind of
mold. Whether a child likes sports or reading should
be left up to the child, for example. All of a child's
inclinations should be encouraged, and none
discouraged. Conditional love is, in my opinion, not
love at all. No child should have to earn his or her
parents' love.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn said once that America had lost
its civic courage, and that might be our core problem.
It takes a great deal of courage to live free and to
allow others to live free. Maybe I've answered my own
question. People's itch to control others might be
motivated by fear. That's at least worth thinking
about.

May 19, 2007

Charley Reese [send him mail] has been a journalist
for 49 years.

© 2007 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.