Every time George W. Bush shows up on television he is up to the same task. He is trying to convince me that I am being mercilessly oppressed by the government in every aspect of my life. Not that my daily itinerary is regulated by government agencies, but my hard-earned money is stolen in the form of excessive taxation.

I think I’m supposed to get really mad and say things like “how does the government know what is best for Erik A. Hoversten?” or “I can’t believe that the government is blowing MY money on stupid crap!”

Try though I may, I just can’t get all hot and bothered about government tyranny. The problem is that I just don’t feel oppressed.

If I want to go visit Bush in Texas, all I have to do is jump in the car and drive. I don’t have to ask permission, tell anyone I’m coming or go through any military check points. I can even skip the country 24 hours a day 365 days a year.

I can drive around Ames at 3 a.m. because there is no government curfew. I can say that all five-star generals are nincompoop stupid heads without worrying about anything. I can even write that in a newspaper.

I have friends in the military. Does that get me any preferential treatment? Nope.

Pop quiz: Can you name a country you would consider living in that has lower taxes than the United States? I can’t.

I feel so completely unfettered by the government that I sometimes wonder if Bush is campaigning for president of Bolivia instead of the United States.

The scary thing is that Bush has a lot of supporters. I even see a ton of Bush stickers around Ames.

Bush is a stupid man, but the people who run his campaign aren’t. They wouldn’t write scripts for him to play up the oppression bit if it didn’t actually strike a nerve with a lot of people.

Some people don’t want the government to regulate their guns, keep them from posting the Ten Commandments, or give their money to freeloading welfare moms.

It has been my experience that these people who want the government out of their lives are pretty selective about what parts of the government they want to keep out. To prove this, I thought I would do a little thought exercise based on the principle that Erik Hoversten knows what’s best for Erik Hoversten, not a bunch of bleeding heart liberals in Congress.

The first thing we would do is get rid of gun laws that stand between me and my Second Amendment rights. I should be able to have whatever guns I want.

I’ll invite Bush over and we can saw the barrels off of some shotguns. Maybe I’ll get a few mortars.

Scratch that, I’ll get some Vaseline and gasoline and me and Bush can make some homemade napalm.

On second thought, burning people is so sixteenth century. I’ll just keep some ebola virus on hand to liquefy people that try and take my stinger missiles.

We can also get rid of the Food and Drug Administration. All they do is keep drugs from getting on the market. If someone has a thyroid problem, why do they need to go to the doctor to get a prescription anyway. Why not just buy it direct from the pharmacy? Maybe I’ll try some anti-psychotic drugs for fun.

If someone wants to use drugs, why should the government stop them? They’re only hurting themselves.

Why should the government be able to tell you what you can and can’t grow on your own property? That means I can invite Bush over to teach me how to snort some blow.

While we’re at it, we can take in the natural beauty of central Iowa, cruising back roads for ditch weed in a Hum-V — which we need since we don’t pay taxes to fix the roads.

After that we could go get some hookers.

You can have sex with anyone you want for free, so why can’t you charge someone for it? Or we could go to the strip club and hang out with some junior high students.

What are they doing there? It’s their parent’s responsibility to keep track of them, not the government’s. Maybe we can score some booze or smokes from them while we’re at it.

If the strippers get boring we could go to the bull fights. The government quit controlling immigration,so there is a substantial Latin American contingent everywhere in the United States now. We probably shouldn’t stay for long though.

Since they got rid of affirmative action there’s a bunch of highly qualified minorities in unskilled labor jobs and they’re not happy about it.

Oh yeah, all the weapons you can have, they can have, too.

The point is that conservative, white, god-fearing “Christians” are heavily reliant on the small amount of government involvement that we have in this country to maintain the status quo.

Through some bizarre twist, these are the same people who complain the most about government involvement.

It is unclear to me why some people are so ready to latch onto the idea of oppressive government, while, at the same time, they promote federalization of drug offenses and legislated morality.

The Bush campaign focuses on this smoke and mirrors routine instead of fiscal conservatism, an idea that at least has some merit.

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Erik Hoversten is a senior in Math from Eagan, Minn.