[Originally published elsewhere under a female pseudonym.]

The terrorists have landed. They are here. Every day they are kidnapping American citizens ("detainees"), disrespecting property, and establishing turmoil where peaceful living once flourished. They wear badges and call your house soliciting contributions, because they are out there risking their lives — for you.

What do timber cutters, fishers, pilots/navigators, structural metal workers, drivers-sales workers, roofers, electrical power installers, farm workers, construction laborers, and truck drivers have in common? According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (.pdf), they were the people with the highest workplace fatality rates in 2002. (Incidentally, BLS reports that 92% of workplace deaths in that year were of men.) In other words, all of those jobs involve people who, statistically, put their lives more at risk than policemen, yet do not enjoy nor seek to attain an air of godliness. After the 2003 stats are published, it will be interesting to find where the vaunted military fits in the halls of sacrifice. What these 2002 stats tell you, using the logic of the morose, is that the men who sacrifice the most for their country are timber cutters. But who really knows? I do know that I have never been forcibly and directly held against my will by a timber cutter.

The latest trend in the marketing of citizen harassment is billboards with one or more cops striking a tough pose underneath haughty verbiage about "deadbeat dads" and "click it or ticket" scams. The people of America have fallen to an ambient subordination where "zero tolerance" tyranny and busybody piety are embraced as a religion. Whether concerning cigarettes, guns, or seatbelts, the best way to an American's heart is now through a billy club or the threat of it. Fear is the engine of America's entrenched and growing tradition for servile conformity, while all 'round come shouts, "Let Freedom Ring!"

Let's consider just the seatbelt shakedown. This is sold to the collective by appealing to socialist economics, buttressed by slave media who repeat the tyrants' spew verbatim. It seems that people who don't wear seatbelts are a hindrance to the herd. Because we're all together, Soviet Union style, one man's independent (such a quaint word) path costs everybody. And once that collective foot is in the door, anything goes with increasing rapidity. You may be stopped, handcuffed, detained, kidnapped, pilloried, and waylaid under color of law for committing the sin of treating your property as your own. We are pelted with public service radio and TV ads where a threatening voiceover ends, ". . . so click it, or ticket," with an ominous sound effect that may as well be a jail cell door being slammed.

We can now wonder seriously when the campaign for mandatory tooth brushing will commence. Maybe 10 years ago we would have laughed at the suggestion, but no longer. And when the rulers get to the tooth brushing stage, just imagine the invasive enforcement that will be suggested over and over, subtly at first, until the public is inured to the horror, stepping back meekly to allow the most hideous of state actions to occur with regularity. Naturally, they will no longer be hideous anymore, just as searches and seizures are deemed unreasonable only when the equilibrium between the state's behavior and the slaves' intolerance is crossed — a margin moving steadily toward totalitarianism.

Such are the footholds of tyrants. Society will benefit if we all brush our teeth regularly. Once they sell the twist that it's really important, anything goes. It only takes gentle but steady pressure over time, like water over rocks. We all wear down, though some crack before they smudge. If the United States exist 20 years from now, it's likely that we will have heard serious proposals that the newly enacted tooth brushing laws "just don't have any teeth," a phrase that will inspire appreciative groans and chuckles from the slut media at the press conference, and will be printed intact. Pictures of children with nasty tooth maladies will be published as needed. Parents will be blamed, naturally, and the long arm of the law will be invoked because there are some parents out there who just don't care, and therefore we all must suffer. We are in the thralls of Romper Room politics for the global classroom of citizen children, and our place is merely to recognize our true positions as wards of the state.

The average American will play right along with the tooth-brushing invasion, for the common good. He will ante up for the cameras and networks that will be installed near every bathroom sink at which children are to brush. Naturally, the first laws, as with bicycle helmets, will begin with children. You can hear the arguments now, each serving as a grip for the next intrusion:

"We cannot allow children to be victims of parents who are not sufficiently concerned for the health of their little ones. What parent would object to these progressive measures if he were not already mistreating his child? It is time that we all join together for society, and submit to a very small measure of inconvenience in order to have the greater benefit of healthy children. To continue as we have would be child abuse."

That spiel is repellent enough, but there is nothing in the logic of collectivists that isolates kids from adults, cars from houses, seatbelts from tooth brushing, and elbow room from chains — nothing except the time it will take to move from one layer to the next. It will start with pledges to brush, then move to little clickers that must be pressed twice a day, followed by the cameras, removal of children from the home, and the intended coup de grâce: Total slavery for health and freedom.

At which stage will you refuse? The question hasn't changed for thousands of years. When will it be too much? You can be sure that government types never stop at too much. They only wait. They wait for acclimation to the threshold tyranny, manufacture disaster tales, and decry the unfortunate need to take drastic new steps for your own good. Curiously, each wave accords more power to the rulers.

When they come for our teeth, perhaps they will find teeth in abundance. It would be long — so very long — overdue.