America, land of the free – Who are we kidding? | Commentary | NewJerseyNewsroom.com -- Your State. Your News.

BY ROY NERSESIAN

STRAIGHT TALK

We live in a nation that has departed from the First Principles of our Founding Fathers so far it has become a joke to say we live in the land of the free. If anything, we are being prepped to become serfs run by a global political and economic self-appointed elite of the likes of George Soros and friends.

Let’s just look at three items almost randomly selected to see how far we’ve fallen from grace.

Airport Searches

We’ve learned to accept groping by TSA goons of the groin and breasts of 8-year-old girls and 80-year-old grandma’s. Of course it’s done in the good name of airport security although 100% of terrorists are 25-35 year old males from a certain part of the world I cannot mention because I don’t want to be branded politically incorrect. Hint: on a map, it’s where the oil is.

But all the X-rays and groping does no good in detecting the latest means of getting explosives on board a plane: a plastic rectum container loaded with plastic explosives. Expertly designed and lubricated, it can set off a really massive flatulent emission 30,000 feet in the air. Needless to say, grandmas and grandchildren can drop their drawers, bend forward, and enjoy the TSA registered search – all in the good name of security.

New Passport Rules

This is a sampling of the proposed changes to replace the old system of submitting a certified copy of your birth certificate and proof of residence.

If your mother received either pre- or post-natal care, you’re to list the location of the facility, name of doctor and dates of appointments. (My mother is dead so who would I contact?)

The names and addresses of all people present at your birth. (My mother, if alive, would not know this beyond the doctor’s name.)

Only a sick bureaucrat can come up with a list like this and the fact that these are even proposed is a testament of our progress towards serfdom. You can read the complete listing of bureaucracy run amok at http://epic.org/privacy/id_cards/DS5513_Proposed_Form.pdf

Mileage Tax

We pay 50 cents per gallon for Federal highway tax and also state highway taxes, which are very high in California, New York and Connecticut compared to New Jersey. On top of this is a proposal to tax mileage on cars. The rationale is that fuel-efficient cars don’t pay as much as a gas guzzling SUV in gasoline taxes on a mileage basis. So a mileage tax is being proposed to punish those who do the right thing and buy fuel-efficient cars. It’s not the dysfunctional purpose of the tax that bothers me as much as the means to ensure compliance. Every car will be fitted with a GPS type device to record your coming and going. All this will be stored in a vast computer bank that not only figures up how much you travel, but also where and when. It’s only a step away from asking you why. Someone in Congress feels that this is a good idea. Actually more than one is needed to get this freedom-robbing proposal on the table for consideration once again.

I’m sure there are many good Americans who feel comfortable with these changes and proposals for they’ve been carefully nurtured to want the benefits of a nanny state, also called entitlements. The fact that nanny states have failed miserably to deliver what they promised doesn’t seem to bother anyone. In case you’re wondering which nanny states have failed, let’s start with the fall of communism in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. On the surface, China is supposed to be a nanny state, but we all know better. Its success is based on capitalist entrepreneurism, not socialism, much to our economic distress. Even Vietnam has denigrated the nanny state to Michael Jackson’s Neverland. Cuba is taking its first steps to dismantling a state that employs all and makes nothing even with Fidel Castro still alive. You’d think they would have the common courtesy of letting him die first, but he’s living too long to further postpone needed reforms. Before our very eyes, the western European nanny state, the idol of the emerging global plutocracy, is falling apart at the seams.

Why don’t these aspiring plutocrats learn? The truth is that they’re not interested in your welfare or in the nanny state. They’re interested in grabbing absolute power for themselves by having absolute control over our lives. The nanny state gives them what they crave by cleverly disguising their power grab as a benefit for us all. The nanny state only serves to deceive us in accepting their mastery. If we let it happen, we deserve the consequences.

Roy Nersesian, a resident of Maplewood, teaches at the Leon Hess School of Business at Monmouth University in West Long Branch and also at the Center for Energy and Marine Transportation at Columbia University. He has authored several books, the last on Energy for the 21st Century published by M.E. Sharpe.