License, please? ...by Bill Knell

The year was 1973 and I was a junior in high school. I recall reading a short story for my English Literature class. The story was written sometime back in the late 1800s by an author I cannot recall and was just one of many included in my text book as an example of writing from that time. What I do recall was that the author was annoyed at some new laws passed by his state and the story was a kind of lampooning piece about them. I also remember that he joked about how that one day there would be so many laws that people would need a license to own a dog.

Moving forward to the present, that joke is no longer as funny as it is true. However, I wish to note that with the trend being to pass laws that appear designed to protect everybody and everything on the planet, as well as to protect us from ourselves, will it be long before we need a license just to to purchase any pet? Note I use the word “purchase” which indicates a need to pre-qualify for the privilege of pet ownership. But let’s not stop there, shall we?

Now that we live in a nation where the people who allegedly represent us feel it necessary to regulate every aspect of our lives, how long will it be before we must be weighed in each month by a doctor or some bureaucrat to decide how much and what we are allowed to purchase at the supermarket or whether we will be given the privilege to purchase fast food? Sound crazy? Well, I think if you asked any sane person who lived in this nation a decade or two ago if people would be restricted from purchasing a certain sized soda cup by the government, they would have laughed you to scorn. But that is now a reality in New York City and I am sure the legal insanity will spread out from there.

If pre-qualification for pet and animal ownership ever becomes a reality (and I have every reason to believe it will within the next decade), the next obvious move will be for lawmakers to enact legislation which makes it necessary for anyone wanting to have a child to be pre-qualified for that newly established legal privilege. I would say to look for that to happen in the USA in less than twenty years. Before you doubt, just wait until supporters of pre-qualification for pet ownership flood the airways and Internet with photos of abused animals and politicians quoting how much it costs to deal with unwanted and abandoned pets in the times of budget slashing and diminishing tax revenues.

Soon after you will begin to hear how expensive it is to deal with children who are abused, unwanted, abandoned or undernourished by irresponsible parents and how that is a burden that the government can no longer afford to bare. Taking away our rights has always been first about convincing people that they never actually had those “rights” in the first place and finding a just cause as the reason. That cause could be an issue or an enemy, but it always ends up being the primary reason that we end up further enslaved to a government bent on total control of its citizenry. There will come a time when a license to give birth and mandatory abortions will be a reality in this nation which was once called a place where government “of the people, by the people, for the people” would not perish from the earth (Abraham Lincoln).

and It’s important to remember that rights are never taken away, they are surrendered by weak willed people who believe they are doing the right thing. As far as I am concerned freedom of choice is the right thing and everything else is just a poor substitute for liberty. If history has taught us anything it is that most of the problems which exist in society are not solved, but tend to be further complicated and convoluted by government intervention. If you happen to live in the U.S. as I do, I would like to provide you with some hopeful bit of advice to help remedy this situation, but I am afraid that time is past. However, hope springs eternal and perhaps someday people will suddenly wake up and smell the stink coming from the control freaks trying to run our lives.