Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 22, 2009

Government is pure consumption without useful productivity. The only things that government can actually make are criminals out of innocent people, and corpses out of living human beings.

The former principle is illustrated quite well by a bizarre story out of Haverford, Pennsylvania. A group of seven youngsters were selling lemonade door-to-door when a man named William Nickerson, who would have made a good block captain in Berlin circa 1936, called the police to complain. Nickerson thought the kids weren?t being properly supervised.

When a policeman arrived, he explained to the kids that it was against the law to sell lemonade without a permit. This struck a number of observers ? including several police officers ? as utterly bizarre.

It turns out that the ordinance was misconstrued, since it doesn?t apply to anyone younger than 16. But it?s worth wondering how many young entrepreneurs have been frustrated or forcibly shut down by that law and others like it.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.