SMALL GOVERNMENT & THE CASTLE DOCTRINE

Every now and then I have an Epiphany of sorts, and two ideas that seem remote in time, space and relevance suddenly jell into a cohesive picture, albeit a warped one – like a Dali painting. I had one of those moments earlier this morning, so I thought I'd take a moment to jot my thoughts down on paper and see if any of it made sense. I'll let my readers be the judge.

The first idea I was considering was the much-hyped GOP notion that what America needs is small government. Small government proponents believe that the federal government should consist of the President (preferably a Republican one), a vice-president (ditto on the party choice), a Secretary of State (preferably a 3-star general or higher), an Attorney General (only staunch death penalty proponents can apply), Congress (with GOP majorities in both houses), a Supreme Court (all right-wingers) and a military. Beyond that, it's every man for himself.

In the small-government scheme of things, there's no need for bureaucrats or government regulators because, in the small government advocate's view, there's no such thing as a good regulation. Companies should be free to pollute at will and sell whatever they think the marketplace will bear. If citizens suffer or die as a result, that's the price they pay for living in the freest nation of earth.

Of course, the major up-side of small government is little taxation, and that's apparently a big plus in this day and age.

The second idea I was batting around in my brain was the "Castle Doctrine", the medieval notion that a man's home is his castle and he should have a right to defend it against any aggressor with lethal force without first having to make an effort to retreat if it could be done safely. It's the backbone of current self-defense laws in many states. Recently, a growing number of states have been expanding the castle doctrine to include a person's place of employment, business and automobile, and some have even erased the duty to retreat altogether, no matter where the person is attacked. Personally, I think that advocates more violence, but that's not the point here, so I'll move on.

Here's where my Epiphany occurred. What if I'm sitting in my home, 16 miles from the nearest nuclear power plant, and the radiation warning sirens start wailing, indicating that lethal radiation is leaking from the plant because we no longer have big government regulators to monitor and require plant safety? Isn't that radiation threatening my life? And at that moment in time, shouldn't I be able to pull out a gun and start blasting away at everyone from the power company CEO to my neighbor who's a stockholder in the plant, because…well, they're threatening my life, and our newest "Castle Doctrine" says I can use lethal force against such threats anywhere I darn please?

Hmm. Maybe we're onto something here!