My Sunday column

I, extremist


Evidently the federal government is keeping an eye on me.
Why?
Because I have certain views which qualify me as a potential nutcase.
Among those:
• I like guns, grenades, submarines, old fighter planes, Panzer tanks and samurai swords.
• I have odd religious views such as my refusal to believe that God cares one iota about the minutiae of my life (or anybody else’s) and instead concentrates on Big God Stuff. (Just because He can hear a sparrow fall doesn’t mean he sits around listening for it.)
• I get my philosophical, political and economic views from radicals. Yup, nut cases like Jefferson, Madison and Patrick Henry, as well as Rand, Heinlein, Hayek and Jerry Jeff Walker.
• I eat red meat, drink cold beer and wouldn’t know a quiche if it wandered into the crosshairs of the infrared scope on my high-powered assault rifle.
• I don’t like to pay taxes, but I do. I probably would like to do some drugs, but I don’t. In both cases, I think the government has far too large a role.
• I watch old war movies and root for the Americans, especially John Wayne when he’s leading the charge.
•I like my deer trophies big and my federal government small. Real small. Real, real small. Smaller than Keith Olberman’s brain small.
• I own a Confederate battle flag, subscribe to America’s Civil War and can tell you whose division shattered the Union line at Chickamauga.

See, I told you I was crazy.
Speaking of crazy, George W. Bush must have been right off his rocker when he fathered the Department of Homeland Security.
The idea that creating a vast bureaucracy to oversee other vast bureaucracies was going to make this country safer was and is laughable.
But Bush did what government boobs always want to do, he made more government.
This time, he assured us, we’ll get it right.
Now, a few years later, the Democrats have control of the security apparatus and when it comes to spreading bureaucracies and wasting loot, they’re going to make the Republicans look like the amateurs they are.
But for the record, there are millions of us who believe that radically smaller government is better. It makes for a more free and more prosperous society. We don’t plan on blowing anything or anybody up, but we retain the right to make our case. Loudly and proudly.
That said, we also retain the right to be left alone. If that means moving into a backwoods cabin in Idaho and reading “Lee’s Lieutenants” for the 17th time, so be it.
We have always been a nation of cranks and there’s no reason that should stop now.
On the flip side, my fellow oddballs need to use a little common sense.
It’s OK to talk about the coming Global Super Storm, but converting your swimming pool into a bunker and stocking it with 400 cases of Van Camps pork and beans is sure to draw unfavorable comment.
It’s OK to dislike our new president, but that doesn’t mean he’s the anti-Christ or a super secret radical Muslim agent working closely with renegade Knights Templar to bring about the destruction of Christianity.
Ease up fellows.
There’s crazy and there’s CRAZY.
We know the difference, even if Johnny Law can’t figure it out.

Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. He writes about a wide range of topics at espysoutpost.blogspot.com