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Weekly Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country
of West Texas
Opinion
Friday, November 3, 2006
Sage Views
By Smokey Briggs
A moment in the life
of a Russian citizen
The following is from an article that appeared recently in a metropolitan daily newspaper. It read like this:
MOSCOW - Nancivona Maloolavich hustled her shoes off, chucked some lip gloss into the trash and was carefully polite to the screeners as she made her way through Moscow International Airport’s security checkpoint the other day.
“I try to be as nice as possible,” said the Moscow native. “I just want to get through it smoothly.”
Ms. Maloolavich didn’t know it, but her perennial politeness may someday save her from getting slapped with a fine by the Transportation Police Bureau (TPB).
The reader finds out later that actually the fine is not a “fine” at all, as an unpaid fine is transferred to the Russian Revenue Bureau (RRB) for collection - and we all know that the power of national tax collecting agencies extends to the ability to put the offender in prison.
The fines Ms. Maloolavich could face range upward to the equivalent of $10,000, and the low-level bureaucrats empowered to hand out these fines can fine her for something as ill-defined as, “interfering with the screening process,” whatever that means. On a bad day, the offense could be something so simple as irritating the petty bureaucrat in charge.
None of the above is really surprising is it? I mean, this is the kind of downtrodden, fearful of the police/government, existence we know is part of living in most of the hell holes of this earth - even the upscale hell holes like the capital city of Russia.
Ms. Maloolavich’s attitude of fearful politeness toward a government worker is the hallmark of citizens of nations ruled by a tyrannical government that has taxed and planned its citizens into the poorhouse, and uses the entire alphabet to abbreviate the scores of government agencies that have been created to keep the people in line and paying their taxes.
It is not hard to imagine the same story about a Nancy Heinrich living in Nazi Germany, or a Nan Wu living in Communist China, is it?
It’s the same story - only the names change as different cultures find themselves under the boot of an oppressive government.
When you read the accounts of people who lived under (survived) such oppressive regimes you find the march to slavery always takes the same route.
The oppression never happened all at once - the final tyranny was the end result of a slow loss of freedom.
The slow loss of freedom was always justified in the name of keeping the people safe - safe from Jews, safe from capitalists, safe from religion, safe from starvation, safe from barbarians, safe from themselves.
Usually, the first freedoms lost were seemingly small concessions - best described as nothing more than a little bit more government involvement in everyday life in exchange for a little more safety.
A little more regulation. A little more power for the police so that they could do their job more efficiently. A few more taxes to help pay for new government regulation, and of course, a little more enforcement to catch those unpatriotic souls who would dodge those taxes.
The lesson of history is that all these little concessions add up until one day, people turn around, as though they are waking up from a dream, and find that they live in a nightmarish world where every aspect of their lives is touched by some government bureaucrat.
A world where the simplest daily tasks require government-issued tax stamps, identification, registration, inspection and permission.
A world where much of an average citizen’s life is spent waiting in line to see this bureaucrat and pay this tax, and where angering such a bureaucrat can ruin your whole day, or worse.
A world where policemen spend more time collecting taxes than looking for criminals, and where citizens fear any encounter with law enforcement.
It is a world devoid of freedom, and filled with fear.
The story that is quoted at the beginning of this column did appear in a major metropolitan daily newspaper.
The paper was The Dallas Morning News, and the story ran on Monday, October 23, 2006.
However, the story actually read like this:
Nancy Malooly hustled her shoes off, chucked some lip gloss into the trash and was carefully polite to the screeners as she made her way through Dallas Love Field’s security checkpoint the other day.
“I try to be as nice as possible,” said the Dallas resident. “I just want to get through it smoothly.”
Ms. Malooly didn’t know it, but her perennial politeness may someday save her from getting slapped with a fine by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
The reader finds out later that actually the fine is not a “fine” at all, as an unpaid fine is transferred to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for collection - and we all know that the power of the IRS to collect taxes extends to the ability to put the offender in prison.
The fines Ms. Malooly could face range upward to the equivalent of $10,000, and the low-level bureaucrats empowered to hand out these fines can fine her for something as ill-defined as, “interfering with the screening process,” whatever that means. On a bad day the offense could be something so simple as irritating the petty bureaucrat in charge.
Folks, the day that the Nancy Malooly’s of the world are “carefully polite” to government bureaucrats for fear of being fined, or worse, is the day we have traded our freedom for something else.
It appears that day is here.
Whatever we traded our freedom for, it was not worth it.
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Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 432-445-5475, FAX 432-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
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