QotD: Modern Government

[N]ow that both parties have become dedicated to monstrous government, we won't have to wait for an election to get started. It will also take a government dedicated to butting-in to the private lives of its citizens in an unprecedented manner. This too will prove to be no speed bump at all. Those that currently hold positions of power at the local, state, or federal level are exactly those citizens who take a great, almost sexual, pleasure in butting-in to their neighbors' lives at every opportunity. (Indeed, it is a source of continuing disappointment in every American's life that whenever one feels a strange hand groping around one's buttocks, it is never an attractive stranger, but merely some large or small politician searching for one's wallet.) [. . .] Having evolved a society that is incapable of letting individuals decide anything of importance for themselves, all the pieces are in place for the ultimate government meddle and muddle.

Gerard van der Leun, "The Hybridization of America", American Digest, 2005-10-12