The government has overstepped its bounds again.

What came to mind when you read that statement? What particular usurpation of rights do you imagine you are about to read commentary about? Have you seen some recent event in the news, perhaps directly affecting your personal life, that you hoped I was going to editorialize on -- to give voice and support to your outrage?

The boys in blue that gave the treatment to Abner Louima in NYC.

There are so many examples of the government overstepping it's bounds that it sometimes seems futile to write, yell, scream, or hire an attorney over each incident. When all is said and done, even if some particular issue is settled in favor of freedom (and how many of them actually are?) then next week, some cop, bureaucrat, or elected official is going to pull another fast one on The People. If it isn't the New York jack-booted thugs-in-blue beating the shit out of a prisoner with radios and sodomizing him with a toilet plunger in the precinct, it is some bureaucrat deciding that for you to stay in business, you are going to have to take on a new partner to tell you how to run it.

What new partner? Government. Will this partner be investing cash in your firm to purchase the right to make decisions that you were perfectly capable of handling before the bureaucrat took notice of what you were doing? Nyet, but you will end up paying more in taxes and wasted time for the privilege of "being in compliance" with whatever the hell government decides to throw at you.

Or maybe some bonehead in high office is going to decide that s/he will only allow people to use encryption in their personal and business electronic communication if government itself has a key to be able to read it. You bet! That's a great idea, since we trust our government not to abuse this power, don't we?

Nonviolent protestors being pepper sprayed in Humboldt County, California. We trust government not to abuse power, don't we? Courtesy of peppersprayvictims.org

Sorry, but this particular thesis isn't about any specific one of the hundreds of examples that you and I could list over a couple cups of joe and a Danish, of government minding your business and mine. I'll probably mention a few of them -- by way of example -- and eventually, maybe in later chapters I'll get around to applying what we discover to some specific situations, but before we even begin, there's something we're going to attempt to accomplish first. We are going to begin at the beginning. This could save us a lot of time at the back end, actually, because it's always more efficient to tackle the root of a problem first, then to try to muck around with individual symptoms, without know what causes them.

We need to delineate exactly where your and my responsibilities should end and where government's begins. Having done so, we will have established a philosophical basis for what government should be allowed to do, and conversely, what should be out of bounds. Having determined that, you and I will be in a position to take the next step and decide for our mutual selves what's right and/or wrong about specific issues.

To do this, we will have to start with a single assumption, up front. I hate assumptions. People get into trouble with them, but in this case, I don't see any way around it. Here's the assumption:

Through the powers of reason -- concentration on what is known or can be learned -- you and I can ascertain a code of morality. Stated simply: People can decide, based on their own judgment, what is right and what is wrong.

If you cannot at least make that assumption with me, you might as well quit reading right here. If you believe you cannot decide what is right and wrong -- by yourself -- on the basis of your own ability to reason, without relying on the authority of something or someone else, we are done here.

You will probably not believe any of the rest of this -- except incidentally, i.e., where it happens to align with whatever hand-me-down belief system you were spoon-fed with your first solid food. You may as well surf somebody else's site while you wait for the phone to ring, or a knock on your door. The caller will be your minister, or mom, or schoolteacher or government official, or anybody else that carries some air of authority.

This man, and millions of others, would be happy to tell you how to live.

If you can't make the assumption that you are capable of knowing from within what is good, and what is evil, there's always someone ready to "lay down the law" for you, because you will ceaselessly have to rely on someone else's opinion: "older and wiser heads" or a direct revelation from God, as interpreted by somebody in a robe with uncombed hair, or wearing a bad tie and a hundred, fifty-dollar haircut. There's always going to be someone out there willing to tell you what's right and wrong, and how you should live. Someone out there is ready to relieve you of the responsibility of deciding anything for yourself.

If you can't make that one short jump of faith in yourself, you will always be a pathetic believer in anything and anybody except yourself. There is nothing for you to discover here, because you don't had the mindset to perceive facts and make your own decisions. I don't want people tagging along, believing what they read here, because I'm certainly no authority (I just do my own thinking) so just GO AWAY NOW!