Probably the most entertaining thing about reading the article about the 7 year old girl who found her lemonade stand shut down by the Portland health department was reading the comments that followed. Those comments quickly devolved into a contest between 'conservatives' and 'liberals.' That discussion was probably warranted, and while I would sympathize with the conservative comments I tend to think a valuable facet was generally overlooked: the overarching belief in our society that it really is possible to eradicate all unpleasant experiences and even if it is not possible, it is moral and proper to make the attempt.

By 'unpleasant experiences' I mean literally any unpleasant experience, from being murdered to being offended to being made sick by a little girl's lemonade not properly handled.

What we have here is an attitude, and I have to say that it is not confined only to liberals or moderates but can be seen often enough among conservatives, as well. If that is the case, what label can be appropriately made? The problem is that once one goes down the road to taking action in the cause of the 'public good,' or as the US Constitution puts it, the 'general welfare,' there seems to be no objective place to stop and desist taking action. Moreover, the actions taken tend to accrue over time so that today government at every level- local, state, and federal- has reached into every area of American life. I say 'every' on purpose and deliberately, for I am hard pressed to think of any part of my life that isn't regulated somehow by some government somewhere in some measure.

However, even if we should stop and discover one or two that have been overlooked at present, my general point is that if history is any guide, even these will fall to the regulators at some point. Since it never happens that these impositions- for our own good- are rarely, if ever revoked, we can say with nearly perfect certainty that a day is coming when every little endeavor we engage in, no matter how trifling or miniscule, falls under the legislating eye of the Omni-Benevolent Government.

Thus, a little girl's lemonade stand necessarily falls under the purview of inspectors. Hence, locale after locale bans smoking- even in private. Consequently, we must, by law, 'buckle up,' and children up to a certain age and weight must have booster seats. Naturally, trans fat must be banned. Quite so, guns should be strictly regulated. Indeed, even our speech must be free of anything smacking of 'hate.'

It is all a great big mess and it isn't going to get any better short of scrapping the Constitution and starting over. And I'm not even optimistic that this would help, because a change of words does not translate automatically into a change in attitude and approach. What precisely needs to change? The reader may be thinking that if even a single life is saved, it is self-evidently moral and right to pursue measures in our society that would do so. However, I am not convinced that this drive is in actuality spun out of compassion. I think a great deal of it actually comes from fear for one's own well being. The newspapers are chock full of stories about weird and random ways in which we die. Obviously, creative and restrictive legislation is required to match the universe's creativity in killing us!

You can see this fear lying at the bottom of the Lemonade story and its comments as well as in numerous other stories. The unending quest seems to be stripping risk out of living: risk of death, certainly, but also risk of being offended, risk of falling ill, risk of accident, risk that anything today may make us uncomfortable or confront our mortality. We punt it to bureaucrats ostensibly out of concern for others but in fact we are afraid of taking responsibility for our own risk management. That way, if something bad happens to us, we at least have the consolation that the matter was out of our hands- we can blame the bureaucrat for not protecting us, and if there is not yet a bureaucrat protecting us we can blame the government for not introducing yet another layer of legislation calling for a bureaucrat.

In the Lemonade story, the purchasers themselves could have sized up the situation to see if there was danger of illness or death. But who can sustain the constant vigilance required in order to be on guard in every area of our lives where we depend on the behaviors of others? You can see where the argument goes, but can anyone see where the argument ends?

Taken to its logical conclusion, we can easily imagine it being necessary to appoint a government worker to shadow each and every person in the country to help us chart our way through the dangerous business of living. This raises practical problems. What other options are there? I suppose rather we should each be encased in our own individual padded rooms. This raises problems, too, but at least we can hope no one falls through the cracks. In short, the logical conclusion of this line of argument is some form of outright tyranny, and the worst kind of tyranny, the kind which we invite upon ourselves!

The culture teems with resistance to these trends (the movies Office Space and Fight Club spring to mind) but in point of fact we are happy that the events, attitudes, and behaviors exhibited in them are restricted to the screen. If only our padded cells have a TV to give us our daily infusion of Thrill we might just live a happy life, free of tragedy, free of angst, free of discomfort, free of worry, free of death by trans fat.

Many readers would rebel against that sort of micromanagement but the protests are empty: they are constantly laying down the foundation for just that sort of thing. This goes for conservatives, too, I'm afraid. I'll even include myself in the indictment. We are all in the business of accumulating layers of protection from the badness of the world. One would sound heartless if he argued that we shouldn’t spare someone from life's calamities, and besides, we might be that someone.

Pass the chains and show me to my padded room. Thank you sir, may I have another.

Anthony Horvath is the Executive Director of Athanatos Christian Ministries and the author of the Birth Pangs series. He is also a national pro-life speaker.

(When I asked if there were any places not yet infringed upon by regulation many readers may have at last fell upon 'intimate relations' as one such place. Liberals and Libertarians might consider that a hard fought accomplishment in light of the so called puritanical sexual laws that have marked American culture for hundreds of years, but no Christian ever suggested that people should need to get a permit before having children like Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood did, and no Christian ever proposed that under the Constitution one could rightly sterilize people, allowing them to procreate only once the government gives the go ahead, like John Holdren- Obama's 'science czar' once did. Rest assured, if our Happy Leaders feel it necessary to regulate even sexual intercourse, say, to cut down putative overpopulation in order to save the earth from global warming- you know, hypothetically speaking- they will have no problem doing so.)