‘Just do exactly what we say to do; it’s for your own good, you know’

By David McElroy · June 28, 2012

When I was younger, one of my neighbors came over and said he had something important to talk about.

“I have good news,” he said as he waved a piece of paper. “I’ve just signed the neighborhood constitution. It’s going to keep you safe and free. You’re not going to have to worry about a thing, because I’m going to take care of you. Best of all, I’m protecting you against attacks from space aliens.”

I’d never considered the notion that I needed to worry about being attacked by space aliens, but the more I thought about it, well, it seemed like a good idea to have someone protect me from them. And Mr. Madison seemed so sincere, so I figured he must be right.

Not much changed at first. I went on living my life and kept to myself. Every now and then Mr. Madison would tell me that I needed to change something about my house or my yard, but it was no big deal. Mostly I was relieved because the aliens hadn’t attacked.

Mr. Madison couldn’t do all of the protecting and ordering himself, so he deputized members of his family to help out. He only appointed the best, of course, so they had my best interests at heart. That’s what they told me, anyway.

I had a rock fence on one side of my yard that I’d built myself, and I was pretty proud of it. But Mr. Madison’s son, Franklin, came along and told me that the rock fence wasn’t safe. He said I might be walking near it and it could suddenly fall. I reminded him that it had been standing for awhile and nothing had happened to it, but he said he understood more about these complicated things than I do, so I needed to comply.

I really hated to get rid of that fence, but I new that the Madisons knew more about things than I did. Besides, we had that neighborhood constitution that said he could tell me what to do, so I figured they were right. I tore down the stone wall and replaced it with a chain link fence, one sold by a nice man who Mr. Madison recommended.

After that, the Madisons started finding more things that needed to be changed. Another son, Lyndon, came over one day and said they had decided I was too poor to take care of myself properly, so they were going to start making my decisions about which doctor to go to and how much to pay him, but they were going to help out with the cost, too. I had been perfectly happy with my old doctor — the one who had always come to my house — but the Madisons know more than I do about these complicated things.

Not long ago, Mr. Madison came over and told me that he had decided I needed to buy a car. I was confused, because I don’t need a car. I live in the city, so I take buses where I want to go. I couldn’t afford to buy a car and I didn’t see why I needed one.

“You just do exactly what we say to do,” Mr. Madison said. “It’s for your own good, you know.”

Well, I didn’t like this one bit, so I reminded Mr. Madison of something in his neighborhood constitution that said I had the right to appeal his decision. I told him that’s what I wanted to do.

“That’s certainly your right, son,” he said in a kindly way. I could tell that he cares a lot about me.

Mr. Madison said his wife, Sandra, was the appeals judge. That seemed fair, because she could read the neighborhood constitution and she would certainly see that it didn’t say anything about making me buy anything.

This morning, Mr. Madison came over with Sandra to tell me her decision. And they had another man with them.

“You need to buy a car,” she said. “It’s part of our commitment to taking care of you. But here’s the good news. This is Mr. Sloan. He has a car lot and he’s going to sell you a car. So you don’t have to worry yourself about it. We’ve already decided everything.”

I still didn’t think I needed a car, so I wasn’t especially happy, but they had that piece of paper that said they could tell me what to do, so who was I to argue? I bought the car, but I haven’t used it yet.

All in all, this neighborhood constitution has been a great arrangement, even if there have been a few bumps along the way. Best of all, Mr. Madison has kept his biggest promise. I still haven’t been abducted by space aliens.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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