COLUMN: Car keys and beer
Not only is the Legislature not playing with a full deck, but it is playing with two-headed coins. One side says “keep the government out of people’s homes,” and the other side says, “Hi. I’m John Ashcroft and I’m watching you.”
OK, it really isn’t a two-headed coin other than for the purposes of my metaphor, but there is a situation of “heads you lose, tails you don’t win.”
Like it is so cool that our state government decided that it should not be against the law to pile a bunch of kids into the back of a pickup truck like hounds on a hunting trip and drive around free as the wind because somehow that would detract from the family values more than the kids bouncing out of pickups like Styrofoam peanut packing material on the way to the landfill.
If the government wants to stay out of the home, it can’t at the same time be peeking in the windows.
I’ll always fall back to P.J. O’Rourke, who although he is a Republican, put it more succinctly than anyone before or since: “Giving money to politicians is like giving car keys and beer to teenagers.”
The words “common sense” were also floating through the air way too much at this year’s legislative session. Given the setting, these words carry about the same weight as the words “free time” do in prisons.
If common sense were the prevailing ethic we wouldn’t need a government at all. We’d all be looking out for the common good banding together in volunteer work crews on weekends to build schools and libraries whilst singing inspirational songs. We’d drive sensible cars, wear comfortable shoes and teach each other to make soap and goat cheese.
Schools would be palaces, athletes would play for free, and the Pentagon would have regular bake sales if they need to buy a couple more Stealth bombers. But they would never need to do this because there would be no conflict.
Of course, that would be utopian, but that is what relying on common sense is.
Common sense dictates that people will wear seatbelts for their own safety or that they should not put a bunch of kids in the back of a pickup truck. But common sense also tells me I shouldn’t have to lock my doors on my car or my house, that nobody would talk on a cell phone and drive if he really cared about other people’s lives, anybody with a sixth-grade education ought to be able to fill out his own tax return, athletes should not make more than teachers, O.J. did it, Lincoln was the last honest president, James Brown must have cloned himself, Keith Richards really is dead, MJ should not have comeback even the first time, McDonald’s is the only place that can make chicken not taste like chicken, everybody knows when you are wearing that toupee, nobody actually wins wars, the national debt doesn’t count when your party is in office, when you get them alone and a little bit intoxicated Iraqis, North Koreans and Americans all think their leaders are a few spokes short of a balanced wheel.
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday in The Statesman. Comments can be sent to slightlyoffcenter@attbi.com.