Why must a wife be so insolent and disobey her husband?

We ALL serve somebody, and here in the USA, you get a choice who to serve.

you're in favor of wives being disobedient to their husbands?

It's eleven and I actually had to drag myself out of bed; I fell asleep next to my daughter while reading her a bedtime story. So here I am, groggy but with beer in hand and Paine at the ready, as I've threatened.

So let me start with Paine:

"If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost--without exception--at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness. He has been at once their tyrant and their slave." (Philadelphia Magazine, August, 1775).

There's even more to that letter, but hopefully that is enough of a quote to assure you that even in those days, some recognized the implications of liberty even within personal relationships. That, after all, is where we began this discussion, by recognizing that the personal is the political, and your post here also uses a marriage--one you have visualized as extremely oppressive--as a metaphor for government.

Yes, you got an emotional reaction from me when I read this. But metaphor does not entirely create or describe reality. I see two assumptions you make that do not entirely apply to a representative democracy. Firstly, by comparing the government to an abusive husband in a marriage, you seem to say that "government" is some monolithic beast that reduces the wife, or "citizen," to complete submission. But this is not entirely true; the form of government we have today does not have all of its power concentrated into one person or even one governmental body; it is distributed among representatives on the local, state, and federal levels, all elected by the people...and also in other, largely unelected, branches of government, such as the judiciary and various executive departments. You may, in fact, still believe you are justified in describing this power as monolithic, but the fact remains that this metaphor is not entirely accurate.

The other assumption you make by describing the woman, or "citizen," as entirely subservient, is that the citizen in a representative democracy has no rights of redress against her government. In a republic such as ours, we have the Constitution to protect us against the most predatory practices of the federal government, and the states have their respective Constitutions to assure such protections for its citizens. If a citizen believes her consitutional rights have been violated, in many cases she has the right to sue the government (yes, I am recognizing a problem here...citizens do *not* always have standing to sue if their consitutional rights have been abridged). Also, the citizen can use her rights as a voter to vote out the elected officials that do not please her. So, I also believe it is inaccurate to compare the citizen of a government to an abused wife, because the citizen does in fact have some power in this relationship.

However, my description of representative democracy and the appropriate role of the Constitution is admittedly an idealistic one, one that does not entirely hold true in the days of governmental corruption--and also the influence of judges and elected representatives who willfully ignore the checks the Constitution is supposed to place on their power. I just spent the day writing about the Model Emergency Health Powers Act--one of the most tyrannical, oppressive documents I have ever had the displeasure of reading. Given the conditions of blatant disrespect of the Constitution, state law, and all regulatory authority--all of these are blatantly suspended by this Act given a public health emergency--I agree that government is nothing more than a show of power, enforced at the end of a gun (as Rand would have put it).

So I hope you understand that my critique does not miss the essence, the kernel, of what you were trying to say with this metaphor. The essential difference between our positions is simply whether we believe that a government, properly saddled and fettered by a document such as the United States Constitution, could effectively and nonviolently represent the interests of its citizens--or if it is impossible to conduct government in this way at all, since all government, however veiled in the charade of protectiing its citizens, is ultimately not a reciprocal agreement, merely an act of oppression based ultimately on force,

For now I prefer to believe that a vastly smaller government, one that is fiscally responsible and respectful of the Constitution, is a goal worth pursuing on all levels. We are far from this mark now, but if we were to accomplish this goal, the weight of governmental interference in our everyday lives would be appreciably lessened. And certainly, the wife--the citizen--should NOT "simply shut up and go along." That is called dissent, and I am sure we are both fellow dissenters.

On its most ideal level, we really aren't that far apart. People should learn to live their lives as free from dependence on government as possible. Taxation is ultimately based on force. In my view, the only legitimate reason for government at all is because so many are quite simply not ready to accept the responsiblity for self-governance. Funny thing that so many quote the famous line from Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience: "That government is best which governs least," but neglects the rest of the passage: "That government is best which governs not at all." If we have to live with the mad dog, government, at least provide it with a muzzle...which is why I bother with writing a blog about civil liberties.

In the meantime, I suspect, we both wait hopefully for the inevitable implosion.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson