Go Ahead and Jump

An old saw among opponents of ever more powerful government is the tale of the boiling frog. As the story goes, a frog can be placed in a pot of cool water and, if the heat is turned up slowly enough, find itself boiled alive without ever thinking to jump out.

Having never myself attempted the experiment, I can’t say with any confidence whether or not the tale is literally true. As metaphor, however, it goes right to the heart of the nature of the state.

We, the frogs of 2009, permit ourselves to be subjected to horrors at the hands of government which our forebears of 1976 would have rejected out of hand, which our ancestors of 1876 would have treated as revolutionary casus belli, and which the generation of 1776 would have simply found itself unable to envision.

We have tolerated invasions of our rights because our leaders imposed them on us incrementally and deceptively.