It’s true that Barack Obama loves guns. But only for the privileged politician and bureaucrat classes. You see, without guns, the bureaucrats would get a lot less cooperation fighting all the wars they are engaged in. Gun control is not about protecting us from each other. Gun control is about protecting bureaucrats from their subjects.

You don’t have to go back that far to find Obama taking an extreme stance against gun rights. In 2004, while running for the U.S. Senate, he promised to bar citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits. The Chicago Tribune reported then that Obama “backed federal legislation that would ban citizens from carrying weapons, except for law enforcement.” Obama explained his plan to pre-empt state concealed-carry laws with a federal bill: “National legislation,” Obama said at the time, “will prevent other states’ flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents.”

For a man who doesn’t know me to arrogantly make assumptions about my level of competence and tell me I am not allowed to defend myself is morally wrong. Government has lots of guns. Why can’t I have guns?

The assumption is that government is more responsible with guns than regular people. Prove it. How many individuals have declared war on a country and killed millions of its citizens? Take away every gun regulation. The equation would remain exactly the same. People would still go crazy from time to time without thousands of gun regulations. Some of them would still get access to guns. If all the guns were gone, they would use a car, or poison your food and water, or devise some other method. The mentality a society teaches its citizens is much more important than the rules it writes down in books.

Maybe you could care less about guns. Maybe your pet issue is social injustice. Fine. Let’s talk about that.

The basic problem with government is that it doesn’t actually solve problems. It manages them.

Name one of the social injustices that government has declared war and won. War on Poverty? Nope. We’re nowhere near winning that one. War on Drugs? Nope. Drug use is up. Doesn’t matter if you look at illegal substances or prescription abuse. Not winning. That particular boondoggle isn’t going away anytime soon. War on Terror? The term itself is asinine. The program isn’t designed to stop terror. It’s designed to make us all very afraid. Of real and imagined boogeymen, some of whom wear government issued uniforms and lord it over you at the airport, border crossings and increasingly, on your city streets. We’re not winning the War on Terror and we never will because you cannot wage war on something as broad as “terror” - the whole idea is idiotic.

Finally, the most important war the government is fighting. I see the bureaucrats making a great deal of progress in that particular campaign. The War on Intelligence is moving right along. No, they aren’t winning per se. But the federal government has certainly managed to dumb us down since it took over educating us in 1979. No Child Left Behind has to be one of the most intelligence damning pieces of legislation ever written. The Idiocracy is coming. We’re 23rd in math and 16th in science. Under the management of FedGov, those numbers are sure to get bigger.

Let’s get back to our next President Mr. Obama and his worldview for a moment.

He has promised to pick guardians of the Constitution who do not respect gun rights and believe that a comprehensive ban on gun ownership is consistent with the second amendment.

Senator Obama has a history of projecting a misleading moderation in his politics — and he does it very smoothly. According to his biographer, David Mendell, one of Senator Barack Obama’s greatest political virtues is “his ingenious lack of specificity. . . . While talking or writing about a deeply controversial subject, he considers all points of view before cautiously giving his own often risk-averse assessment, an opinion that often appears so universal that people of various viewpoints would consider it their own.”

It is my belief that Barack Obama has no interest in solving my problems. That’s good because I don’t want him to solve my problems either. The tricky part is that I don’t even want him to manage my problems. They are my problems, and I’ll deal with them.

Mr. Obama when you become President all I want you to do is leave me alone to live my life. I have the audacity to hope you’ll end the four unwinnable wars your predecessors have been managing so poorly in direct violation of the Constitution they swore to uphold. Let the states handle social issues. Let me handle my business. You worry about protecting our borders and getting us out of all those ill advised foreign police duties we’ve assigned ourselves over the last 60 years or so. I’ll worry about running my own life, saving for retirement, choosing which medicine and medical treatment is best for me, picking what kind of gun I want to keep for personal defense, educating my kids and living as long and as healthy as I can. I don’t need help managing any of that stuff, please and thanks. The more rules you try to make me follow in my day to day routine the less likely it is I’ll cooperate with you. Hint: the same rule of thumb applies to people in other countries. Most people who didn’t ask to be managed don’t appreciate it when you decide they need managing.

I appreciate your taking a moment to consider this American’s viewpoint.

Government, by its very nature, engenders some pretty idiotic news stories. This is one of the dumbest I’ve read in years. Intent is no longer an issue in the giant plantation of subjects we called the United States of America. Nancy Pelosi, being one of the overseers, must be protected, even when no one is trying to harm her.

Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said 29-year-old Joseph Calanchini of Pinedale, Wyo., faces a charge of unlawful carrying of a weapon after police officers at the Grand Hyatt hotel noticed him carrying a rifle-type case while checking in. Calanchini did not have a concealed weapons permit, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

Wiley said authorities were not releasing information about whether the weapons were loaded because the case remained under investigation. Wiley said the charge is the same whether the weapons were loaded or unloaded.

Pelosi and other guests briefly evacuated the hotel but were never in danger, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said.

The charge of unlawful carrying of a weapon is ridiculous. Carrying a rifle in a rifle case is perfectly reasonable by anyone’s definition, unless you’re dealing with the government. Since government makes up the rules as they go they don’t have to be reasonable.

Authorities were investigating a report that Calanchini was in town on business and had had the weapons worked upon to prepare for the trip.

“The speaker was never in any danger and she appreciates the quick and professional response of the police,” said Daly.

So what we have is a situation where Speaker Pelosi appreciates “the professional response” of armed thugs. If these police were professional they wouldn’t be charging Joseph Calanchini with anything. They would have simply determined that he was a hunter passing through the area and let him go about his business. Unfortunately we are being treated as subjects instead of citizens by our government. That’s why Calanchini had to be charged with something. He needed to be reminded that he isn’t really free, and America isn’t really the home of the brave.

Alabama is about to begin charging state employees $25 a month for being overweight.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Alabama, pushed to second in national obesity rankings by deep-fried Southern favorites, is cracking down on state workers who are too fat.

The state has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit — or they’ll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.

Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don’t work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors.

Alabama already charges workers who smoke — and has seen some success in getting them to quit — but now has turned its attention to a problem that plagues many in the Deep South: obesity.

While I like the idea of providing incentives to be healthy, I am uncomfortable with the idea of charging penalties for being unhealthy. From a libertarian perspective, I want the most choices possible. On the other hand, insurance companies who have to treat fat people are either going to charge the fat people or spread the cost of the treatments around. That means I might have to pay for someone else to be fat. I’m not that interested in paying for the health care of others, particularly when the health issues are self-induced.

It is not my job to pay for you to be fat, anymore than it should be my job to pay for your children’s upbringing.

Incentives are much more appealing than penalities though. My company recently paid for me to enter a triathlon. For $48, the company motivated me to train heavily for three months. I dropped an inch off my waist and nine pounds off my frame. Long-term I’ve signed up for another triathlon and I’ve joined a gym near work. If the company had instead threatened me with wage garnishment I would have fought tooth and nail against them. My personal productivity would have declined and I would have been likely to complain and spread dissension.

Mac McArthur, executive director of Alabama State Employees Association, said the plan is not designed to punish employees.

“It’s a positive,” he said.

Taking money away from someone is a positive? This guy has been smoking some government ganja.

Bureaucrats are always good at using penalties to try and force people to make good choices, but they hardly ever choose positive incentives as a motivator. Why is that?

Another mental patient has died while in government care. The solution being touted, as usual, is more government oversight.

The state sent a team Tuesday to help Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro draft new procedures to ensure patients receive proper care.

An investigator’s report released Monday found that 50-year-old Steven Sabock died in April after he at one point choked on medication and had been left sitting in a chair for close to a day at the facility about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh. Surveillance video showed hospital staff watching television and playing cards just a few feet away.

What the article doesn’t make clear, and what journalists almost never explain when writing about these types of deaths is the fact that government is what failed.

Cherry Hospital is a 274-bed inpatient psychiatric hospital serving the citizens of 36 eastern North Carolina counties. We are operated by the state of North Carolina, the Department of Health and Human Services.

Government can’t fix government. We don’t ask doctors to operate on themselves so why do we tout more bureaucracy as a solution to problems of human indifference?

Yes, we can pay someone to watch the people who are watching the patients. Is that cost effective? No. Is it a long-term solution to the problem of people playing cards and watching television while a mental patient sits dead on a nearby chair? No. If your culture and civilization failed to build a conscience into these people, or snuffed out one that was there to being with then you have failed as a society.

Address the culture of indifference. How did that get created?

Some college bureaucrats around the country are banding together to send a message that the federal nanny system isn’t working in regards to drinking age.

Top university officials in Maryland - including the chancellor of the state university system and the president of the Johns Hopkins University - say the current drinking age of 21 “is not working” and has led to dangerous binges in which students have harmed themselves and others.

Six college presidents in Maryland are among more than 100 college and university presidents nationwide who have signed a statement calling for a public debate on rethinking the drinking age.

One of the biggest gripes I’ve had with the drinking age is the mentality that goes with it. Parents should set the drinking age. When the state sets the drinking age it sends a subtle message that the state owns you. This is the same message that is sent with any prohibition type rules, regulations and legislation.

If you believe, as I do, that you own your own physical being and your own mind, then the state has no place telling you which substances are legal to put into your body. As long as you are not injuring other people you cannot commit a crime by ingesting a substance. Injuring yourself is not a crime because you are damaging your own property. The problem with this is that our current society teaches that the state has an obligation to take care of all of us individuals collectively. That means that all of us are expected to give up individuality to some extent.

We teach young adults that they are not responsible enough to decide for themselves what they put into their bodies instead of explaining the available options and allowing them to decide for themeselves in responsibly managed environments. Because of the nanny state, young adults have to hide their experimentation with substances that alter reality. This means that they are more likely to get into serious trouble or be injured during the learning process.

Instead of patronizing young people, we should teach them individual responsibility. Few legal adults, no matter how young or old, want to be coddled and talked down to. It’s time we recognized the hypocrisy of making someone a legal adult at 18 while telling them they are still not responsible enough to consume an alcoholic beverage. It’s time we understood that prohibition always causes more problems than it addresses.