David McElroy

I took this picture just after sunset Saturday night near where I live in a suburb of Birmingham, Ala. The sky around me was so perfect — and the trees providing the frame so perfect — that I didn’t feel I was responsible for the art I was making. I felt more as though it was being handed to me on a silver platter. All I had to do was click the virtual shutter on my iPhone. When that happens, it feels like magic.

Most people who spend their lives concentrating on politics and power and governing philosophy don’t seem to spend much time thinking about the meaning of life. It’s all about rights and control and fighting someone else for supremacy. When I was much younger, I could understand that coolly rational way of looking at political discussions, but I’m way past that. For me to think it matters anymore, I have to have a reason why it matters insofar as living life. Experiencing such stunning beauty as I photographed last night — and playing a humble role in making it into art — helps make it all make sense to me. Please indulge me while I try to explain what I mean.

I have no desire for power over other people, so politics for that reason alone doesn’t interest me. I have trouble getting excited about tremendous wealth just to live a life of decadent luxury, so the thought of that bores me. I’m ultimately interested in power and money only if they can serve something I see as a higher purpose. My love of life and my love of beauty give me that purpose, because they give me an instinctive understanding of why I was placed here by “the all-wise Author of nature,” to use Adam Smith’s poetic title for God.

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Everyone who knows anything about the U.S. legal system knows that Congress has the exclusive power to appropriate money for the government to spend. Right? And we know that the Obama administration is locked in negotiations with congressional Republicans over spending — with the Republicans refusing to raise the government’s authorization to borrow more money unless the White House agrees to more spending cuts.

What you don’t know, though, is that some people — including a law professor at George Washington University — are advancing the notion that maybe Congress doesn’t have to approve the spending anyway.

Here’s the insane theory. After the War Between the States, the 14th Amendment had a clause to make sure that the Union’s war debts were paid. It simply says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” Administration officials as prominent as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have raised the possibility of applying that clause to claim that Congress can’t stop the administration from borrowing more money. As insane as that sounds, serious and sober people are advancing the idea with a straight face.

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In Colorado, the state Department of Human Services is proposing new rules that would require day care centers to provide dolls of at least three different races for kids to play with. No, this isn’t a joke.

Among the other proposed rules are those prohibiting whole milk being served to kids older than 2 without a note from a doctor and strict requirements capping time on computers. The proposal was reported Friday by a Denver television station. You can read the actual 98-page document at the agency’s website.

Whatever happened to letting customers decide these issues? Does the state assume that parents are too stupid or uncaring to ask for these things if they believe they’re what their children really need?

Personally, I think a lot of parents do a lousy job. I think they let their kids eat the wrong things and watch too much television. But it’s not my place to make those decisions for them.

There’s a growing line today between two groups of people. It’s not Democrats vs. Republicans. It’s those who believe in individual freedom and choice vs. those who want experts to make decisions about every facet of life. The “one size fits all” mentality is getting worse. The problem isn’t this agency. The solution isn’t “fighting for smaller government.” The issue is bringing real choice to people about which system they’re going to live under by allowing competitive systems of governance. More and more, the “one size fits all” nannies of the state are taking control and choices away from individuals.

The state is the enemy, not just silly rules that “go too far.”