Constitutional government. Gone. Some of us remember it, as a trembling octogenarian remembers ardor in the back seat of his “€™53 Chevy. The young will know it only as an exotic idea. Bush II began the serious bleeding. Obama, the first African-American president and much more African than American, opens the larger veins.

Unfettered surveillance of absolutely everything, militarized police, the military as private presidential army, searches without probable or indeed any cause, photo ID required to buy train tickets, on and on.

Perhaps worse, the endless regulation by Washington, either directly or by federal pressure, of everything anybody ever does. The country was founded on the idea that most things were none of the government’s damned business. Today, everything is the government’s business. There is virtually nothing that cannot be controlled by some level of government.

Why is the use of steroids by baseball players of concern to Washington? Are bulked-up hitters a threat to the commonweal?

Why should smoking in bars be the concern of government? People who don”€™t like smoke can find other bars, or bars which decide to have no-smoking areas. Personally I don”€™t like being around people who talk loudly. Should law require no talking above a whisper in public establishments? Enforce it with audiometers built into tables?

Why is it the government’s business to decide that insisting on academic standards in schools is racist or that mentioning creationism violates an imaginary separation of church and state? Why are the schools in Oklahoma not the concern of Oklahoma?

Why is it Washington’s business to insist that hiring and promotion in fire departments be based on race and sex rather than competence?

When a central government has unlimited powers, as Washington for practical purposes now does, the effect is to disenfranchise the rest of the country. Today the doctrines of states”€™ rights and the Tenth Amendment are often regarded as quaint, obsolete, retrograde, or even conservative. It is none of these, except conservative. People in Montana, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and Washington have very different ideas about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When Washington imposes its one-size-fits-all laws, it imposes an alien culture on most. Never mind the hypocrisy”€”liberal whites in Washington avoid blacks like leprosy”€”but they truly regard themselves as divinely authorized to dictate to the rest of us.

Having power over every aspect of everybody’s life centralized in Washington means that any lobby, meaning self-interested predatory wallets, can pay Congress, venal by disposition, to enact any law the lobby chooses. Worse, an anonymous federal bureaucracy can make a politically correct regulation forcing you to do things that you regard as morally and otherwise repulsive. For example, you have to be genitally groped by TSA. You have no recourse, no voice. Did you vote for this? Do you have any idea who to blame? If you write your Congressman, you will get a form letter expressing his deep gratitude for etc., and nothing else. Constituents are regarded by Congress as a pain in the ass. Will you call TSA to protest? Try calling a brick wall instead. Brick walls are not manipulatively dismissive.

I can”€™t stand it. Yes, I know, I am weak and lack moral character. It is shameful. But as I reflect on the stupid, corrupt, lunatic, and evil mass of brainless, half-assed dirtballs that run us, my only thought is to call for an airdrop of Padre Kino and an intravenous line. Drugs will get you through times of no government better than government will get you through times of no drugs. That’s just common sense.