David McElroy

My company has been working on an office renovation for months and we’re close to actual construction. I have been shocked at how much time and wasted effort is involved in the compliance process to get permits from various government agencies just to make upgrades on our own building. You would think the politicians own the building, because they’re the ones driving many of the decisions. Our building owner keeps having to write checks to government bureaucrats for permission to work on the building which he allegedly owns. If you can’t do as you please with your own property, can you really say you own it?

I don’t watch televised political entertainment. I worked in politics far too long to have a stomach for that anymore. But I see photos of the Democrats’ recent debates and can’t help thinking they look like desperate contestants on a TV game show. Instead of being there to win money, though, they’re competing to see who can promise to steal the most money from you — to give to someone else. Such people who preach about the virtues of government giving money to all sorts of people who they claim they want to help never seem to understand that governments have no money of their own. The only way to hand money to one person is to steal it from someone else who has earned it. Taking money from a person without his consent is theft, whether it’s done by a common mugger or by a politician. Something which is immoral when done by one person doesn’t become virtuous when done by politicians calling themselves a government. Theft is still theft. It’s immoral. Modern Democrats and Republicans are united in their willingness to endorse this theft. Republicans just don’t want quite as much of it. Both positions are evil.

It’s hard to believe that any book could have ever cost just 25 cents, much less one that could have survived since I was a tiny boy. I’m sometimes surprised by which things from my childhood have managed to stay with me for all these years, but I’m not surprised to still have “Good Night, Little Bear.” When I was the tiniest of little boys, this was my favorite book. I’m told that I used to carry it around with me. Everybody around me got tired of reading this story, but I asked for it over and over again. I was delighted by the question of whether the little bear was fooling Papa Bear. The story tickled my little brain with the concept of how people could fool one another but without the malice involved in lying. I think everybody can connect a little bit more with the child he or she once was by being able to touch and re-experience such things from their past. Such artifacts tell us a lot about where we came from and how we became what we are. This is something from childhood which makes me happy.