Anyone familiar with The Who’s brilliant song “Won’t Get Fooled Again” can figure out where this post’s title came from. I was a political junkie in my younger days — even ran for Wisconsin Assembly as a Republican in 1996, you can look it up.
But as time went on, as new revolution followed new revolution, I came to see the real truth in the song comes in its final couplet — “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” No matter who was in charge and what promises they made before becoming boss, the concerns of everyday folks continued to deepen — the inexorable erosion of freedom, the continued disregard for people’s innate rights, even those spelled out as out of bounds for the federal government in the Bill of Rights, the supposed covenant with We the People. The differences between the old boss and the new boss were purely cosmetic — alternate versions of dystopia.
One day while I was writing about the alleged choices the two major parties had put up in the 2008 presidential election and the increasing partisanship of the partisans, I had an epiphany literally in mid-sentence. I was writing, “Freedom is not about choosing the right ruler,” when the epiphany occurred! I finished the sentence: “Oh, wait. Yes it is. Freedom is about realizing that I am the boss of me.”
In other words, stop worrying about choosing the right ruler, and rule your own life.
From that moment it tumbled into place for me what Mr. Jefferson meant when he wrote that we were all created with certain, inalienable rights, and to the extent that government is not working to secure those rights, it is failing. Freedom is not granted by government documents like the Bill of Rights — we are born free, and freedoms are always in danger of being abridged, violated or stripped, and usually by government documents.
“I am the boss of me” is an exhilarating realization and a sobering one, because it means that I’m responsible for myself, and no one else is. Government agents and agencies may purport to take care of me or regulate me, but at the proverbial end of the day, it’s up to me.
