Opting out before opting out was cool

Opting out is nothing new: just ask conscientious objectors and libertarians.

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Illustration / Mark Hoffer / Fort Worth Star-Telegram / Newscom / File
There's a long tradition of individuals refusing the choices the government has placed before them. This artist's rendering of a conscientious objector shows a young man with the world on his mind, against a backdrop of the American flag, with news fighter jets around him.

Opt Out should be our new motto

It has become crystal clear to me that government solutions only cause costly monetary burdens, extravagant misuse of time, and excessive bureaucratic complications. It is high time for all the bureaucrats to just go home. Retire. Forget your foolish social experiment. Abandon your lunatic cravings to mold mankind and exact revenge on your dead father for years of abuse, or whatever other ill caused you to commit so much devastation.

I am sick of our boys dying for ill-conceived delusions and illusions. Must we always send America’s young off to war? Haven’t we seen the destruction, pain, and suffering it causes? At least enough to know better?

I am tired of the taxman stealing the rightfully earned wages of honest laborers. In most cases, mutually beneficial exchange can occur without government intervention. If you are an executive on Ron Brown’s Commerce Department Airline, I am sorry, you’ll have to take the next trip alone. But, you know, you’ll probably be better off that way anyway.

I am sick of bureaucrats wasting billions and billions of dollars away on boondoggles and absurd social experimentation. Must I repeat a long history of government inefficiency? Remember the federal government tea tasters? Now, remember how well we got along when the government shut down for those precious six days in November during the Clinton administration? November 14–20, 1995, best days of my life. The IRS lost $400 million in revenue for the days the enforcement division were closed. My condolences to the National Park visitors who were turned away…

Postscript: Not to mention I discuss the real estate boom and predict its crash and the depreciation of the dollar back in 2003 among other things…

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