Allen Polk Hemphill

Is this a great country, or what?

I awakened this morning, comfortable between sheets that are protected from flammability by government safety and consumer standards. I turned on the light, using the electricity delivered by the government regulated and protected monopoly. I checked the time, on a clock whose Daylight Savings time was set by government mandate. I turned on a TV to a channel regulated in frequency and in content by the government Federal Communications Commission. I took a shower, mindful of wasting water, delivered by a government water district, and had breakfast made from packages where I could read the contents from a government mandated label. I listened to a news broadcast about the new government plan about health care, as introduced to the U. S. Congress by the President's wife.

I dressed, because the government will arrest me if I appear in public in the buff, got in my car -- the one with the government mandated smog controls and safety devices, whose industry mileage is mandated by the government. Listening to a radio station whose frequency was assigned by the government, I was tired of listening to a debate about permitting private schools to compete with government schools, a vote the private schools would surely lose, I popped my Books on Tape into the cassette. Staying aware of the government police, I drove slowly on government streets to the State University, and listened to the tape. The cassette tape was a study assignment -- it was the U. S. Constitution on tape.

The purpose of the Constitution, my government employed professor told me, was to limit the power of the government...