The Wasteland of the Free

At left, Mike's pumpkin.

Open Letter to the Person Who Tore the Obama Sticker Off My Wife's Car

Dear Person Who Is Almost Assuredly an Exurban White Male Under the Age of 25,

Some time between 7pm on Tuesday, Oct. 28th, and 7am this morning, you ripped from my wife's car a bumper sticker supporting Barack Obama and covered up another with a somewhat absurd "Another Democrat for McCain" sticker.

While this may have seemed like a fun prank and a relatively innocent expression of your anger about the failings of your own candidate, it's important to know that it is also the following things: an invasion of privacy, destruction of private property, poor sportsmanship, disruption of the freedom of speech, a tresspass on liberty, and a direct attack on the core principles of the country your candidate feels we should put first.

It's interesting to me that a party that still concerns itself with protecting us from ideas too close to supposed socialism so often collapses into behavior and tactics which border on the totalitarian. (I recognize that it's unlikely that you are an official party operative or that your actions represent anything more than stupid mischief, but as with recent backwards "Bs" and fliers in Virginia that attempt to hoax Democrats into a Nov. 5th election day, there seems to be a willingness -- if not an eagerness -- among McCain supporters to tolerate -- if not engage in -- this sort of thing.) When we talk about extremist liberals, generally we're talking about people who wear too much pachoulli or teach English in Indonesia or stop eating bleached flour or continue to wear sandals or facial hair a bit later into the season than the rest of us. Meanwhile, when conservatives go wild, they tend to engage in behavior that results in America between the years 2000-2008 AD.

There are probably some "fundamental differences," as the candidates say, between you and me. (I mean, besides our difference the willingness to engage in vandalism.) First, I love America most when it is neighborly, rather than intrusive or suspicious. I love America when it is most inclusive and democratic, rather than when it concerns itself only with the liberties of the few and the privileged. Also, I've read the Bill of Rights, and I'm pretty sure that early on in that thing it says that people can put whatever stickers they like on their foriegn-made automobile so long as it is affixed in a way that doesn't lead to air bubbles or include a pirated picture of a comic strip character urinating.

Finally, what you (and, often, your party) don't seem to understand is that freedom does not mean doing whatever the f*ck you want. It is not, all apologies to Kristofferson, another word for nothing left to lose. Freedom means death -- or at least long imprisonment -- to tyrants. It means protection from the indugences of the kingly and powerful. It means:

Don't tread on me.

Yours in the peaceful transfer of power,

Townblog