Rural Missouri farmer John Dollarhite was just fined $90,000 by our central government for engaging in a commercial endeavor.
Was he an illegal alien running drugs across our border?
No, such people benefit from a Department of Injustice that takes their side against Border Patrol agents.
Was a prostitution ring being run out of his home?
No, such people are rewarded with reelection to Congress.
Rather, Dollarhite’s dastardly sin was that he started a business selling rabbits.
It turns out, you see, that you need a federal license to sell the fuzzy, long-eared little creatures. And this brings me to the matter of totalitarianism. According to journalist Mark Steyn, a governmental license was required for only 1 in 20 commercial endeavors in the 1950s.
Now that figure is one in three.
Where does it end?
Well, consider that a law, regulation, or mandate is, by definition, the removal of a freedom, as it states that there is something you must or must not do. This means that the more laws/regulations/mandates we have, the less free from government intrusion we are. Thus, given that we continually create more laws/regulations/mandates but hardly ever rescind any, it means that every year we’re progressively less free.
So that’s what they mean by progressivism.
And the sky is the limit.
Now, the government’s defenders may say that Dollarhite earned more than the $200 he reported and that he was given the paperwork for a license in 2006 but didn’t fill it out. But even if this is true, the issues raised here are still the same. And as for the obvious one, where does the Constitution give the central government the right to regulate the rabbit business?
Then something else occurs to me. Whatever Dollarhite earned, his rather rudimentary website attests to the small-potatoes nature of his operation. Thus, even if you believe that a punishment is in order, is a $90,000 fine even remotely proportionate? And whatever happened to liberal compassion? After all, such a Draconian fine can completely destroy a rural farmer of modest means.
But there is an even more hypocritical aspect to this. Liberals have authored slap-on-the-wrist justice. If a thug from the ghetto commits a violent crime, they’re the first ones to talk about how he’s not responsible because he was raised in a “bad environment.” They’ve told us that punishment is backward and uncompassionate and should be replaced with “rehabilitation.” In fact, I’ve even heard the more devoted lefties claim that “punishment doesn’t work” (tell that to crime-free Singapore).
But then, funny thing: When the matter is transgression against liberals’ own politically correct, feelings-derived rules, they suddenly understand punishment perfectly.
They understand its purpose.
They understand why it works.
And it just can’t be darn harsh enough.
For instance, if someone commits a “hate crime,” liberals tell us that since it isn’t just a crime against an individual but against a whole community, the punishment must be far greater. When a six-year-old boy gives a girl classmate an innocent peck on the cheek, a reprimand or detention isn’t enough. It’s then “sexual harassment” and he has to be suspended. Or if another little boy takes a squirt gun to school or doodle’s a firearm on a piece of paper, he must, well… you guessed it. Rehabilitation? We don’t need no stinkin’ rehabilitation!
Hey, you have to inure them to the state’s injustice while they’re young. That way, when they get older, they won’t consider being fined $90,000 for selling rabbits that big a deal.
