I’m interested in your opinion:

Should the government round up and imprison any having the bumper sticker (or T-shirt, or however conveyed) stating: “Don’t Steal: the Government Hates Competition”?

Is that bumper sticker just government hate speech, and therefore the car owner the moral equivalent of mass murderer McVeigh?

SkippingDog: Seriously, if that’s possible, a humor column obviously is different from a news column. When Dave Barry’s column ran in most newspapers in the country, he sometimes would write something like, “After President John F. Kennedy (LBJ) was assassinated, he was succeeded by President Lyndon Baines Johnson (JFK).” No pecksniff editor ever insisted, “Well, according to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, President John F. Kennedy’s acronym should be JFK, not LBJ. We need accuracy at all times. No humor, please, we’re journalists.”

Skipping dog: It’s in this section: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1550/the-art-of-humor-no-1-woody-allen

NTHEOC: You’re funny. I don’t see how the word “hypocrite” applies here. I just made a joke you didn’t like.

But if you insist on being serious, here’s St. Augustine’s famous passage on government from “The City of God,” Book IV, Chapter 4:

———————-
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor.”

David: Thanks. I read it wrong and corrected the text.

NTHEOC: I suggest you go to Barnes & Noble and purchase a dictionary, then look up the word “hyperbole.”