Trust The State?

It was during my freshman year of college that I first encountered the works of that most eminent American political philosopher, Pogo Possum. Channeled through cartoonist, Walt Kelly, Pogo provided an alternative to the “Ozzie and Harriet” mindset that kept most Americans from engaging in those twin towers of political sin: asking questions and speaking truth. In those post-World War II years in which the state had to hurriedly find a new threat with which to keep Americans under its control – lest they mistakenly think that the end of that war presaged a world at peace – the Cold War bogeyman was put together.

While Pogo was decidedly a left-of-center person – Ayn Rand had yet to arrive on campuses to challenge collectivist thought and behavior – he was one of the remnants of the spirit of classical liberalism whose ranks were rapidly being conscripted into the service of statism. At a time when Sen. Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee were doing their best to convince Boobus Americanus that “active agents of the communist conspiracy” were entrenched everywhere, Pogo went forth from his meager homesite in Okefenokee Swamp to find these “enemy” forces. Upon his return, he confided to his neighbors that “we have met the enemy, and they is us!”

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