Injustice On The Home Front

I saw a political program on TV the other day (I still call it a "program." I also refer to the fridge periodically as an "icebox" and the grocery cart in my lexicon is a "buggy." Sorry, I spent a very significant amount of time with my grandparents as a child.), and on this TV program a very red-faced gentleman was loudly discussing the obvious problems with a certain "advisor" to the President. Apparently, this "advisor" is a communist.

Sense the shock radiating from me right now.

I am no political animal, but I do know one thing: this country was founded on the sanctity of personal property rights. Its that simple. You can't take my stuff without paying for it, and I can't take yours, and if the government wants something of yours they have to at least pay you for it. Its not a bad system really. In fact, our system of property ownership is why Canada still has more ducks than people.

Everybody is so tightly wound about Mexican border transgressions too - I don't get it. I'm worried about Canada. The Mexicans just want a stable place to work and clean water; Canada is apparently siphoning away our entire healthcare system. If my fate is to be decided by a "Medical Death Board" 40 years from now and I hear the word "Aboot" issuing forth from the lips of someone ahead of me in the heart-transplant-line, I am going to be really pissed.

Go think about that for a second.

But forget about Canada and Mexico - we have a major issue right here at home. As of right now did you know that property rights don't extend to uncles, parents, and grandparents? Sure, thats a "special interest group," but its time somebody spoke out.

Growing up I generally assumed that anything of Granddads was mine, more-or-less by default. The basic reasoning is this: if he had known I had wanted it; he'd have bought me one. The fact that he had one and I didn't just meant that he didn't yet know I wanted one, hence he hadn't had the time to buy it for me. I often relieved him of having to make a second trip to get me one by simply purloining the item in question and appropriating it for my own use.

The same is true for parents and, most especially, Uncles. Uncle Buster crafted a monument to me in his garage. Its a two-story spiderweb matrix of broken fishing rods, fired shotgun shells, and empty packages of fishing lures woven together into the ubiquitious one-finger-salute...And thats just the stuff he knows I swiped.

The grandchildren in our family have so strained and warped Uncle Robert that he keeps most of Wal-Mart displayed in his basement against the possibility that we might come over. Just last week I walked in his front door to spend the weekend (I invited myself) and I said "Hey Robert. Whats up?" Without a word of greeting he looked up at me, wild-eyed, from his easy chair and slowly enunciated "D O Y O U N E E D A N E W S E T O F T R A I L E R T I E -D O W N S ??!!"

Actually, no. I took yours last week.