Dr. Von Hayek said he troubled over this for a long time trying to understand it, and the best that he could come up with was that, to intellectuals, it's all about control.

           One of the problems of today’s politician is that they do not engage in the pursuit of simple truths. Today’s politician is, more often than not, a theoretical emotionalist. A theoretical emotionalist finds it hard to believe that the proverbial Joads that run the local bakery are happy. “How can they be happy?” asks the politician, “when they’re barely making it?” To solve what the politician believes is a crisis he will put in theoretical railroad switches to assist the Joads in living a better lifestyle. The politician cannot help himself. He has been well schooled in the theoretical, and he has spent countless hours reading other theoretical ideas on the subject, and he decides that the simple truth can exist no longer. The world has become complicated, he says, and the simple solutions of the past no longer apply. As with most issues of an economic nature, the invisible hands that put the switches into place usually do more harm than good. Most politicians mean well, but they never appropriately gauge the unintended consequences of their intervention. They don’t realize what a vital role the Joads play in the economy--even from their seemingly unsubstantial branch. So, they help them. They place these theoretical railroad switches in place to help the little guy. In doing so, of course, the politician is hurting the big guy. In some ways, this is the goal. If held to point, the politician will inform the public that the big guy can afford to withstand a little pain. The big guy has big pockets, he informs us, and he hopes that we will hold our fist high in our battle against the big guy.

          In this scenario, let’s say the big guy is the supplier who the politician believes is taking unfair profit in the cycle of the business venture with the Joads. Of course, the big guy will pass the pain onto the Joads who in turn pass that pain onto their customer base, and in the end the business of the Joads is hurt worse than anyone else in the cycle, because they were just barely making it when the politician decided to put in the switches. In the end, the politician meant well, so the final result is rarely called into question. The politician may even try to put in another switch to rectify the damage done in the previous attempt. The thing of it is, most politicians are lawyers, and they don’t understand the inner workings of the business cycle. All they know is that their good intentions make for an excellent advertisement, a point in a debate, or a platform position. In general, politicians are the best and the brightest in our community, but some of the times they over complicate issues when the simple truth is staring them in the face. 

Is it possible for a theocracy to rule the United States?  If one were to listen to Hollywood and New York's literary world, the United States has stepped precariously close in the past.  We've been jumping at cardboard cutouts for as long as I can recall.  Think of all the movies, the books, the songs, and the talking head oratories.  As these things go, such an overthrow of this nature would’ve been impossible for some Jim Jones archetype, because we've been chomping at their bit for decades now.  We still jump at the first hint of puritanism, but when it comes to the more permissive types we've been an accepting nation.  We've allowed notions that the nation would've scoffed at even twenty years ago.  (James Earl Carter has an asterisk in this piece, because he was elected in the aftermath of Watergate.)  We elect the permissive types, because it shows growth on our part, it allows us to feel enlightened when the pollster asks us why we voted the way we did, and it allows us to feel well-rounded and wonderful when our friends ask us who we voted for.  We didn't know what to expect from the permissive types.  We giggled at some of the possibilities, and we thought we might enjoy the fruits of a more permissive society.  We had been told for decades that we live in a puritanical society, and we thought we could use a little more bipartisanship.  We never stopped to gauge the worst possibilities, and we scoffed at what we thought were bell ringers on the street corners.  We still don't.  We still find it impossible to believe that the permissive types are going to be the ones taking away our freedom.