I had the most marvelous adventure today.  Let me tell you about it.

I woke up and took a long shower in water that was pure enough to drink.  While washing up, I listened to a few songs on the radio. Since I was listening for free, it comforted me to know that radio stations have to pay songwriters to use their music.

Yesterday, the mailman brought me a check, and I wanted to take it to the bank.  What a wonderful convenience it is, I thought, that someone stops at my house six days a week just to deliver and pick up messages.

I put the check in my pocket, got in my car and pulled out onto a well-paved street that’s linked to a network of roads that can take me anywhere in this country I want to go.

On my way to the bank, I was delayed by an automobile accident.  The cops were there, directing traffic and investigating who or what to blame.  A fire engine stood by to hose down the scene and protect nearby property if any of the cars caught on fire.  

Just before I reached the bank, I drove past the school my grandchildren attend.  Even though it’s a first-rate school, the students there pay no tuition.

There was a time when I might have cashed my check and put the money in my mattress rather than risk losing it in a bank failure.  Not now, though, since the FDIC insures every penny I have in my account.

From the bank, I headed to the library to check out a book and a couple of DVDs for the weekend.

Feeling pretty good about life, I stopped at McDonald’s for a sandwich.  I felt reasonably sure that both the restaurant and its food supply had been inspected for my safety.  Even if something did go wrong, I knew I could take the restaurant owners to court and have a fair chance of being compensated for any injuries I might suffer.

When I got back home, I thought to myself, “Thank goodness for Big Government!”  For the army, cops and firemen who shield me around the clock; for the courts that settle my disputes; for the safe and plentiful water supply; for the post office; for public schools and public libraries; for the limitless roads; for copyright and banking laws; for the public airwaves that bring me free radio and television; for food and drug inspectors; and for the Social Security check I get every month.   For a relatively few dollars in taxes, I enjoy comforts and securities not even a king could afford on his own.

It’s not a perfect government.  It still fails us on national health care.  It denies civil rights to homosexuals and equal protection to women.  And its so-called “Patriot Act” is a roadside bomb just waiting to shred our hard-won civil liberties.  Even so, Big Government has all the mechanisms to right these wrongs. All it takes is enough citizens demanding that it do so.  

I’m 82-years-old, and I’ve never earned more than $60,000 a year.  But thanks to public education and all the other social services Big Government has made available to me, I’ve had enough money left over—after taxes—to buy a comfortable home, stock it with plenty of food and clothing and raise three children.  

If Big Government really threatened our freedoms, surely I would have noticed some of those freedoms being stripped away.  But it’s been quite the opposite. The year I was born—1935—saw the enactment of the Social Security Act, which provides retirement income to the elderly, and the Wagner Act, which made it easier for working people to organize into unions.  

However, the races were still legally segregated back then, even in the military.  Now racial segregation is outlawed. We’ve also done away with the military draft that once required young men to risk their lives in battle whether they wanted to or not.  That’s a pretty big expansion of freedom. In 1962, a woman named Sherry Finkbine had to go to Sweden to get a legal abortion after she discovered the medicine she’d taken had so damaged the fetus of her fifth child that it could not have survived.  Today, such pregnancies can be terminated here. Until the Supreme Court prohibited it in 1963, all non-Christian students in American public schools were forced to listen to Christian prayers and Bible readings. Now they aren’t. No religion is given that advantage.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson’s most able political aide was forced to resign after he was “caught” engaging in a homosexual act.  Today, homosexuals are routinely elected to high office, including Congress, and serve openly in the White House. Until the enactment of Title 9 in 1972, women in high schools and colleges were economically sidelined from full participation in sports.  Now they aren’t. And recently, by way of the Supreme Court, Big Government insured citizens the right to own guns individually.   

So which freedoms have Big Government restricted during my lifetime?  I can think of only one. Big Government has made it harder for rich people to treat poor people, women and minorities as property.   

If you’re the Lone Ranger type who wants to retreat to the wilderness, grow your own food and blaze your own trails, Big Government won’t stop you.  And if you’re out there making it entirely on your own, you won’t even have to pay income or sales taxes. But if you choose to remain in society with the rest of us and enjoy the benefits Big Government makes possible, you should be applauding instead of whining.

Opponents of Big Government are fond of saying, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”  That’s true. But it’s even truer of the capitalistic economic system, in which you have no say. Just imagine what a system focused solely on profit would do to you if Big Government didn’t stand in its way.  Capitalism doesn’t guarantee democracy. Capitalism was in full bloom back when America was still slaughtering Indians, enslaving black people and forbidding women to vote as matters of national policy. It’s not the size of a government that matters.  It’s whether that government is designed to benefit the few or the many.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to an anti-war rally to protest a current Big Government policy I detest.  Fortunately, Big Government insures my right to do that.