SteynOnline - SOFT FURNISHED DESPOTISM

Mark Steyn - SOFT FURNISHED DESPOTISM, Happy Warrior
Do bureaucrats really think this way? Unfortunately, YES...
Just a few highlights:
"California’s Bureau of Electronic and Appliance Repair was merged with the Bureau of Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation to create a new streamlined, more efficient bureau called – wait for it, stand well back – the Bureau of Electronic and Appliance Repair, Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation."
"A Californian reader of mine, standing slack-jawed before the “Permit to Sell Bedding” hanging at the back of his local Wal-Mart, channeled a bit of (misattributed) George Orwell: We sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough bureaucrats from the Bureau of Home Furnishings stand ready to do violence to those who would sell us unlicensed pillow cases."
"There is a deal of ruin in a nation, but by the time you’ve got a Bureau of Home Furnishings you’re getting awful near the limit. Of all the petty regulatory burdens piled upon the citizen in the Age of Micro-Tyranny, I dislike especially the food handling licensing requirements in an ever multiplying number of jurisdictions from Virginia to Oregon that have put an end to such quintessentially American institutions as the bake sale and the lemonade stand. So civic participation withers, and a government monopoly not just of power but of basic social legitimacy is all that remains."
"...“hope” and “change” are revealed to be merely an abbreviation for a vast overstaffed Bureau of Hope and Change, whose Assistant Directors of Change and Deputy Commissioners of Hope are on a quarter-million per annum and contemplating retirement at 55 from their three-year study group to examine whether we need a new Hope Application form and Change Permit."