May 02, 2005

There is a woman I call She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, after the queen in H. Rider Haggard's novel, She. A few months ago, SWMBO decided my poor pitiful self needed a dog, specifically a pug dog, who, at ten weeks old when I got him, was about eight inches long. His being so tiny was a mistake.

As we were driving back the few hundred miles from the breeder, she held this pug dog ("Norman") in her lap the entire time, and told me she had this nearly overwhelming desire to take him home with her. Why?

Because I was so stupid and incompetent I'd kill him! Not out of malice or sadism, she told me, but out of simple male incompetence and stupidity when it comes to babies of any species. Only she could raise this puppy without sending him to a speedy grave.

When I asked her what specifically I would do to kill Norman, this is the list she gave me:

Drop him.

Close the car door on his head.

Close the house door on his head.

Lose him.

Step on him.

Sit on him.

Sleep on him.

Poison him.

Choke him.

Let a car run over him.

That's not the complete list, by the way. It's about ten percent of it.

All of this proves exactly what I've been saying for years: most women are natural socialists. I think it's why they've traditionally been denied the vote. They operate on the assumption everyone is a baby or a little kid needing to be taken care of, and being a baby or a little kid, are incompetent. It's why she thought I couldn't raise a puppy. God knows what she thinks I'd do with a human baby ("Where is Baby Dumpling?" "Uh. . .my golf bag, I think.").

While this mommy attitude is relatively harmless in personal relationships, it is far from harmless politically. The State as Mommy is a terrible thing. Treat adults like kids, and they'll act like kids.

I hasten to add that some men are natural socialists. I am reminded (snicker) of a fat drunken slob like Teddy Kennedy. That mommy-socialist attitude in government translates to the government being Mommy, and as such, all goodness flows from it to all the little kiddies who are too stupid and incompetent to run their own lives. Isn't that the essence of liberalism?

Even though some men are natural socialists, I'd still have to judge it mostly a feminine thing. And if socialism, or leftism, or whatever you want to call it, has any place in society, it's in the home, and the home only. In society, and politics, no.

Friedrich Hayek, in his book, <i>The Fatal Conceit,</i> made the comment he considered socialism to be primitive, a tribal value. I'd have to agree. A tribe, all of which are rather small, are just fairly large families. Being that small, it's necessary to share.

But just because socialism works, however creakingly, in a family or a small tribe, doesn't mean it'll work in a country with hundreds of millions of people. How can hundreds of millions of people share equally? They can't, and it is the worst of delusions to think the government can function this way.

The Mommy State is Mommy at home, in the form of welfare. The Daddy State is Daddy abroad, killing people by the hundreds of thousands, to protect Mommy at home. That's why welfare is never just welfare; it's always welfare/warfare. It's Mommy and Daddy writ large. Bad Mommy and Bad Daddy, to be totally accurate. It's the worst aspects of Mom and Dad, and almost none of the good.

I still have Norman, who is now four months old. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed still thinks I'm going to kill him. She gives me directions on how to raise him. I just roll my eyes. I figure she can't help it. I am, like most everyone, not only capable of raising a puppy, but running my own life without government interference. I no longer need a Mommy or Daddy. It'd help a lot if most Americans thought the same, and stop looking to the government to take care of their every need -- or trivial want.

Lew Rockwell See Bob's archives there.

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