For generations, lemonade stands taught numerous children a variety of fundamental realities regarding the nature of the world and life beyond the confined of their particular family units. These undertakings still do.
The thing of it is, though, these lessons have very little to do with how providing a desired product along with attentive costumer service if the way to advance economically. Rather, an increasing number of young people are learning from these undertakings that the America that they will likely live the majority of their lives in (if the country does not collapse entirely) will increasingly become a nation where such blatant displays of individuality and personal achievement will be met with hostility and resistance bordering on what cannot be described as anything other than violence.
In most of these instances, the narrative unfolds something like this.
The children are informed that they cannot operate their lemonade stand because they have not obtained the proper permit from the authorities in question.
Those reading these paragraphs sequentially might be inclined to remark that the situation described above hardly classifies as a threat of violence.
Perhaps it is not directly. But what about the instance that occurred outside the U.S. Open in the neighborhood of the Congressional Country Club in the Washington, Metropolitan Area where one outlaw beverage dispenser was slapped with a $500 fine?
With the following observation, renowned economist Walter Williams would likely concur. Whenever a government imposes a fine, what the authorities are actually doing is issuing a threat against the alleged violators of some regulation concocted by any number of state agencies.
If you don't think violence or perhaps rather force (for those that somehow think verbal precision is going to somehow magically protect you from being hauled off to some detention camp or deflect bullets like Superman once the gunfire starts), won't be used against the cited party should they refuse to desist or not pay the fine you have been drinking something far stronger than dixie cup lemonade.
Perhaps the greatest lesson those crushed by the prerogatives of the state in this fashion learn is to never look within themselves to what it takes to get ahead or to do anything that sets themselves apart from the more docile members of the COMMUNITY.
Tis better, in the eyes of the statist, for the individual to accept and embrace the meager pittance and station bestowed upon you by those that have been deemed more qualified than yourself to determine your place for you in the socioeconomic order.
The purpose of these enforcement actions is to rid our nation from such independently inclined riffraff. After all, there are even now so-called "Christians" insisting that what is wrong with the cinematic Western as epitomized by John Wayne and the Cartwrights is not so much gun play but rather that such figures dared to take it upon themselves as individuals or as independent families to do what needed to be done without consultation with the COMMUNITY.
Those observing (especially the young) learn how the regulation is cast is even more important than the regulation itself.
For example, in one case in Georgia, a local police chief justified the disbandment of one particularly notorious lemonade distribution ring composed primarily of adolescent girls on the grounds that the state did not know what was in the distributed concoction.
Unless there is some actionable intelligence that we mere subjects are not privy to, there hasn't been too many Al Qaeda plots intending to disseminate poisoned lemonade through speakeasies operated by juvenile revolutionary jihadists. And even if one stretches back to the old concerns about Halloween delectables being laced with razor blades and the like, most of those accounts were blown all out of proportion by ministers attempting to frighten parents into keeping their children locked inside on that particular autumnal evening.
The next lesson learned is that certain excuses can be invoked in order to perhaps sway popular and bureaucratic opinion as to why the children in question should be allowed to flout the disputed law or regulation. It seems some reasons are some how more noble than others.
For example, in the instance of the youngsters threatened outside the golf course in suburban Maryland, the response in the press was that these youngsters were trying to raise money for charity. But what if the funds were not being raised for that purpose?
Is there something inherently wrong about keeping money for yourself? In exposing the false altruism scandal and other related efforts to squash individuality, Ayn Rand asked what is so bad about individuals attempting to provide for themselves.
On social networks, posters commenting on the issue have gone so far as to remark how dare the media even report on these cases since the accounts cast law enforcement in a negative light because the law must be enforced at all costs because the law is the law. Though American police departments and agencies have not yet deteriorated to the particular level about to be mentioned, it must be pointed out that the Gestapo and the KGB enforced what was considered law in their respective regimes as well.
So-called "conservatives" seem to have no problem whatsoever directing criticism at any assortment of other government agencies. So are they so dimwitted as to lose sight of the higher goal of human liberty when they are distracted by a shiny badge?
Just because a government has enacted a law regarding something, does that mean the temporal statute contramanding the laws of God must be obeyed in all instances? If so, does that mean the family of Corrie Ten Boom got what they deserved? After all, the law is the law.
Some might recoil at the idea of comparing the closing of a bootleg lemonade distillery with some of the greatest crimes in human history as one sheol of a conceptual leap. However, where do you think the framework is laid to get a people once marked by the common sense that flows from natural law to commit deeds that would only be approved by the most warped of consciences?
For, if a people lack the courage to stand for the right of a child to have a lemonade stand, do you think they will muster the courage to speak out regarding more profound incidents when those in power start aiming guns at heads in order to implement their transformative agendas?
Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.
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