Resist government control?

I got two tickets last week. Same truck. Same time.

The first ticket was for parking on the sidewalk. There is a small noncurbed portion of sidewalk (not a wheelchair access) right in front of the newspaper where I work. I regard it as a parking space. The city does not. This is a philosophical dispute.

The second ticket was for having an expired inspection sticker on my truck. I hadn’t noticed. This is not a dispute, nor does it involve any philosophy. At best, I can say that a bloated, out-of-control government has decided to impose arbitrary standards on my vehicle. If I fail to meet their arbitrary standards, they confiscate some of my hard-earned money.

The total for both tickets was $70. I considered my options.

I could have decided to vote for Donald Trump but, while I am white and middle-aged and I was angry, I’m not crazy and I do not admire the Third Reich. Besides, that solution did not promise immediate assistance.

I considered taking action of a far more drastic sort.

I figured I could go get a gun, and defend this little piece of my rights. I don’t own a gun, and I don’t have any kind of license or permit, but I haven’t been a newspaper reporter for 30 years without knowing how to buy an illegal gun. I live in an economically depressed urban area. Out in the suburbs, you may think the government is coming to take your guns. Here in cracked-sidewalk America, we know nobody’s running out of guns anytime soon.

Once I had the gun. I could walk six blocks to the army surplus store, grab a set of fatigues and pick up an American flag. Total cost? Maybe $30. I had that on me, and it’s better to spend your money on a flag and some scraps of a uniform than it is to give it to the confiscatory government.

After I had the gun, the uniform scraps and the flag, all I had to do was “occupy” the piece of sidewalk/parking space on which my truck was sitting. I could say I was doing it to preserve all our freedoms, to make clear the will of the founders. I have some Native-American blood in me on my Pop’s side so, if worse came to worse; I could always insist I was reclaiming my ancestral land.

I was pretty thrilled there for a minute. Two hundred bucks for a third hand pistol, $30 for the scraps of uniform and the flag, and I’d be a patriot, ready to die for this sacred piece of sidewalk/parking space.

I didn’t do it, of course. I took the ticket off the windshield and, that night, I wrote a check for $70, and I put it in the envelope provided.

You know why?

Because I am one of the people who pay. We pay the taxes and the tickets. Your slogans may sound fierce and your bumper sticker may be threatening, but the ones who pay run the country.

Marc Munroe Dion is a
nationally syndicated columnist. Dion's latest book, "Marc Dion: Vol. I" is a collection of his best 2014 columns and is available for Nook and Kindle.