Q: Regarding the man who drove his plane into the IRS building in Texas -- is this a valid way to protest Big Government?

A: Well, answer the question this way: How much closer are we to a limited government because of this incident? Not very -- and probably even further away, thanks to this incident. As more things like this happen, the more the left can say, "See? Anybody who opposes us is crazy." The important thing to remember about America is that we still essentially enjoy freedom of speech. In that regard, we are not China or Iran and we have not yet gone down that road. I have little doubt that some members of Congress, and maybe even the President himself, would just love to censor people if they thought they could get away with it. Senator Chuck Schumer comes to mind, who in the early days after Obama's election victory told the media that a restoration of the "fairness doctrine" against right-wing talk radio would likely be on the way. Nevertheless, we're not there yet, and I can imagine there would be huge protests if it ever came to that, based on the recent election in Massachusetts and the year-long opposition to ObamaCare that ultimately seems to have brought it down.

The man who ran his plane into the IRS building operated on two faulty premises: That life is hopeless, because of our crazy big government; and that he has a right to take others down with him. Neither of these premises are correct. We live under a crazy and dysfunctional Big Government, but not under a dictatorship -- and there's a difference. If he concluded that HIS life was hopeless, then he was entitled to take his own life quietly and without risking anyone else's well-being or safety. I maintain that life is not hopeless, and definitely not because of Big Government. This is because we still have freedom of speech, as I said, which means people who oppose big government, high taxes and the like are free to speak their minds and persuade others. The biggest problem so far is that no politicians in either party have yet shown the courage to reverse course on Big Government. It's going to happen sooner or later because the programs we have are going bankrupt and when the government becomes unable to pay Medicare and Social Security claims, there are going to be big problems. It would be much, much better if our elected leaders faced things sooner rather than later. They already have waited way too long and evaded the tough issues, in part because a majority of the American people themselves have done so. "I want my Big Government programs -- but I don't want Big Government!" has been the majority view for the last few decades.

Still, violence is not the answer. Violence isn't going to change a single mind. Violence only makes sense in the context of literal, physical self-defense. If our government crossed over into dictatorship and totalitarianism, then you'd have no choice but to defend yourself once the thought police came after you. But we're still free to protest peacefully, thanks to freedom of speech, and it's still possible to civilly and peacefully reverse course. As much as I blame our elected officials for so many of the disasters government has brought upon us, I still blame the majority of the American people most of all. Most either evade or allow themselves to remain unaware of the fact that you cannot have freedom and prosperity while, at the same time, expanding the welfare and regulatory state. Case in point: Peggy Noonan, a perceptive and talented writer who does not intellectually grasp, but does sense, the nature of the crisis in America wrote the following in The Wall Street Journal: "The old vote themselves benefits that their children will have to pay for. What kind of a people do that?" She nailed it, right there. If America consists of a majority of people who are prepared to vote away the individual rights of others, while still demanding their own -- then the majority deserve what's happening, and what's coming. They don't need a terrorist to crash a plane into a building because they're going to live see much worse, and it will be their own evasion and lack of integrity that brought it about.

Socialism AND capitalism -- arbitrary rule over others AND individual freedom -- simply cannot coexist in the same society. Flying airplanes into IRS offices isn't going to bring any clarity to this fundamental contradiction which a majority still hold in their minds. Logic and reason can, and will -- if and when more people start to think.

The problem with politics is deeper than Democrats vs. Republicans and deeper than Obama. The problem is that politics, as we know it, consists of career professionals spending other people's money -- billions and billions of dollars of it. The money is nothing more than plunder. We wonder why there's such a lack of grace, class and morality in Washington DC. How could there be? These elected officials are charged with spreading around money seized by force. Think Tony Soprano, or any other organized thief, lifted to respectability and open legality and you have the likes of Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and, yes, most of their Republican colleagues in crime.

The plain truth is, you cannot make the illegitimate legitimate; you cannot make the unrespectable respectable. I don't think most Americans fully understand this. They rail against the party in power without opposing what makes that party possible. Republicans may have spent less than Democrats, but that's simply a reflection of the fact that they didn't have the nerve to plunder trillions rather than billions. Now that Obama liberals have raised (or lowered) the bar on plunder, Republicans will simply follow suit the next time they're in charge. Do you seriously think that the Republicans who ran Congress a few short years ago, once restored to power, are actually going to cut spending?

What's good about America right now is that a healthy majority seem to at least sense that something is terribly wrong. As troubling as the collapse of the real estate market and the growing unemployment rates are, people can sense -- and are acting and voting as if they sense -- something much worse is amiss. The problem is: They don't seem to understand what it is. They're overlooking the obvious. They're missing, evading or simply failing to understand that charging elected officials with redistributing wealth is no different than letting a King, a Czar or a Soviet or Nazi dictator do the same thing. Democratic nuances can't change the nature of the fact that plunder is plunder, plain and simple. Politicians of both parties are simply following the logic of the Big Government welfare-redistributive-regulatory state to its final conclusion: That if it's OK to seize this much private wealth and use it for political purposes, it's OK to seize that much, too. "Hey, if they can do it -- we can do it too." The last 3 or 4 years have been liberal Democrats' way of saying, "Hey, those Republicans mostly ran things for the last 20 or 30 years. They have no business spending the plunder -- that's our territory!" And you can see how they played out their frustrations and pent-up resentment. Your great-great-great grandchildren will be forced to pay for some Congressman’s local pet project. That’s what it has come to, in the land of the once-free and the home of the previously brave.

America must do more than change parties. It has to change -- and by change I mean make a complete U-turn reversal -- with respect to its whole philosophy of government. Entire government agencies and cabinet departments are going to have to be shut down. Entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) will have to be curbed and/or phased out. Yes, this will take years, but it's going to happen anyway so we may as well face facts and implement privatization as rationally as possible, keeping in mind that it should have started years ago. It's all going to happen anyway, because we're totally going broke. There should be no more entitlement programs, not a single one, not ever again -- and that includes health care. The United States is now a debtor nation and losing its historically high credit rating, for the first time since America became an industrialized giant in the nineteenth century. We are in serious trouble and Obama is the symptom, the face of the trouble more than the root cause. Fascist China is overtaking us economically, now holding most of American debt, something that could never have happened if America had remained a real and unhampered free-market economy. We can't blame it all on Obama or Bush, although these men did plenty to escalate the final collapse.

It's now up to Americans to save America. The bums in office are not going to save us, but throwing them out won't be enough. Nobody is coming to rescue us. It has to come from within. Whatever the "Tea Party" movement amounts to in practice, it does represent this attitude and it's a good one. It's not new bums or better politicians we need; it's a whole new philosophy of government. Freedom, productivity and greatness have been undermined and hampered by our rulers for too long. It's time to undermine the rulers -- to order them the hell out of our way -- and let freedom, productivity and the greatness that once was America have a chance to rule again.

William Shatner has a great new talk show called "Raw Nerve." Unlike Oprah, Shatner is an interviewer, not a flatterer (although Orpah only flatters those she likes). Recently, Shatner interviewed the talk show host Jerry Springer. Jerry Springer is that rarest of liberals--a conscientious and articulate one. I think he's wrong about essentially everything political, but because he's conceptual and articulate, unlike most liberals nowadays, at least you can see his chain of reasoning and identify his errors. In the interview (and I'm quoting from memory here), Springer said he supports socialism because "life is 99 percent about luck." He cites his own experience as the son of Holocaust survivors and, later, the wealthy beneficiary of "a silly talk show" as evidence that most success is about luck.

Now think about this for a minute. Springer is saying that he has nothing to do with his own success. He's implying that he finds his own television show disgusting (as many of us do). Instead of blaming this on the poor taste of willfully ignorant people, and at least giving himself credit for finding a way to make a profit during a comparatively depraved time in cultural history, he blames his self-loathing on the nature of reality itself. Reality, he insists, is all about luck. "Luck" is the secular liberal's term for "God." I have no more respect for a liberal than I do a religious person screaming platitudes about God's will and other imagined nonsense. Based on Springer's logic, it's not fair that some have more than others since nobody in any way earned what they have, or what they produced. It follows, at least to Springer, that government must redistribute everything equally since nobody owns it anyway. He calls it "progressivism," as all Obamaists do, rather than socialism, but we all know it's socialism. Springer is more candid than most liberal politicians in that he openly admits he does not believe there's such a thing as productive effort and honestly earned success--not for himself, and not for others.