All those people with nothing to do but listen as they stood in a security clearance line was too tempting for a tall, 60ish man in the Chicago airport.
“Obama,” he said in a voice loud enough for everyone in the three switch-back queue to hear, “wants government to take over everything. Doesn’t matter that government never does anything right. Whatever government touches, it fouls up. Won’t be long before taxes double.” There was more, but no variety.
A woman with a frown on her face muttered, “Now there’s a man after my own heart!”
No one challenged him. Not much point. Why make a scene in a public place?
Still, one could imagine himself climbing up on an adjoining soapbox and making this stump speech:
— Hey, mister, you are in an airport terminal built by government. Maybe you got here on one of the most successful socialist enterprises in U.S. history — the interstate highway program created under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
— Hey, mister, don’t you know that the United States of America is the most powerful nation on earth. Made powerful by the government’s armed forces. What would you rather have than a government military, private militias run by warlords?
— Hey, mister, do you really want to do away with public education? Medicare? Social Security? Medicaid?
— Hey, mister, are you so unfeeling that you want to deny care to the old who can no longer take care of themselves? How about children without families; the disabled and handicapped?
— Hey, mister, do you know that most medical advances flow from research done by the National Institutes of Health, not from privately funded research? And how was it that the U.S. sent its astronauts to the moon?
— Hey, mister, don’t you ever go to a national park?
— Hey, mister, don’t you really understand that government at every level exists so that people can do together what they cannot do separately?
— Hey, mister, sorry you flunked ninth-grade civics, but it’s not too late to learn.
And that’s how an editorial writer daydreams.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
