Once upon a time, there was a wise and benevolent Council of Masters. It was their job to help the Feeble-Minded Masses get through their days. The Council passed many laws and empowered people with shiny badges to enforce those laws.
The purpose? To ensure the Feeble-Minded Masses didn't make the Wrong Choices. See, left to their own devices, the masses would do Stupid Things — you know, like eating paint chips and McDonald's daily, wearing our underwear outside our clothes, or attempting to change the weather without telling the Secretary of Commerce.
The Council of Masters looked out on the land and saw that it was only their Wise and Benevolent Laws that stopped the Feeble-Minded Masses from becoming lead-paint-addled dunderheads who each weighed four hundred pounds and whose cholesterol numbers were somewhere between "mozarella sticks" and "imminent death." And so the Masters climbed aboard their unicorns and flew off across the Rainbow Bridge to Congress, where they ate desserts from eternally flowering trees of Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and Unlimited Government Funding, and everyone -- even the Feeble-Minded Masses -- lived happily ever after.
In other words, this story is complete fantasy.
The reality is that we live with a not-so-benevolent Council of Masters. Our government long ago stopped caring about the will of the people, and with few exceptions, its representatives care only about their own power.
Now imagine that the Council of Masters from our story knew that the way to stop the helpless masses from questioning their power was to sow division among them. They could not do it more effectively, more deliberately, than if they took money from the dummies wearing underwear outside their clothes and gave it to the activist group People Against External Undergarments. The same is true if they taxed all the McDonald's food to make the McDonald's eaters pay for efforts to stamp out fast food restaurants, and so on.
Sounds dumb, right? Well, partly, it sounds dumb because we're terrible storytellers. But mostly it sounds dumb because that is exactly what our government does right now. For instance, today, tax dollars are going to fund abortions, which means taking money from people who, in many cases, are morally opposed to abortion. This angers the pro-lifers. But also right now, tax dollars are used to shovel money down the bottomless pit that is corporate bailouts and corporate welfare, upsetting free marketeers and the progressives who hate corporations. No matter which side of the political aisle you're on (are there only two?), our government is wasting your tax dollars to spend it coercively on things you don't support.
That's got to stop. It creates division and opposition while taking the focus OFF government transparency and keeping us all under the sway of the ruling class. And right now, the Feeble-Minded Masses don't seem inclined to question their unicorn-riding overlords. But maybe, just maybe, if you wear your freedom-loving t-shirt tomorrow, you just might reach one of them.