Bogus USA Freedom Rants

Mark Morford, SF Gate ColumnistDeny it at your peril.

This is the hilarious paradox of America, of modern life in general.

We do not actually want complete freedom. We don’t even understand what the hell such an unfettered beast would entail, really. As Thomas Hobbes so famously said, were mankind to live in a true state of nature, free of structure and laws and our million beloved social contracts, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” And who the hell wants that?

Most of us don’t really want government to stop protecting us from the world and ourselves, the FDA to stop making sure our foods aren’t poisonous, the EPA to stop checking on the water supply, the myriad agencies to stop making sure we don’t die every single day from 1,000 slings and arrows and outrageous growth hormones and insane militant right-wing murderous gun nuts.

How furious we get when something goes wrong because the government failed to regulate! How angry we get that the agency didn’t do its job, the law wasn’t enforced, the police didn’t respond, the rules were not followed, the warning label not clearly displayed, the restaurant not inspected, the meat not real, the doctor not certified, the corporation not ethical, the pothole not filled!