In 1830, German settlers in Pennsylvania are credited with the United States’ first indoor, Christmas tree.  Most Americans initially rejected the tradition as pagan, but over time they adopted the custom with one obviously, all-American modification.  Europeans typically limited themselves to four-footers, while Americans proudly wedged their trees floor-to-ceiling; information which explains my Christmas tree.  When I built the log trusses for our house, I bolted a ring to the ridgepole to hook a block-and-tackle so as to stand a 300 pound tree in the south end of our living room.  After all, four-footers are for Europeans and sissies such as Mizzou hunger-strikers.                  

We typically cut our tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving hoping we can solicit a little sweat-equity from any loitering, holiday guests.  Hunting, harvesting, hauling and then hoisting a full, 15-footer requires more strength than the trophy wife can muster even with my loving words encouraging her to man-up.  She cries a lot over the holidays.  To prepare for Sunday’s Christmas tree outing, I zipped to the Custer National Forest office to purchase a five-dollar tree permit; a step which needles me thinking how their forest mismanagement has led to catastrophic fires.  Taxpayers ultimately bought thousands of charred trees for prices well north of a five-spot.

   The Custer National Forest office relocates more frequently than a displaced Bakken oil worker and I remember visiting them in the old downtown Billings post office before they moved to the heights for a couple years.  Recently, they joined forces with the BLM in a brand new, massive, federal office building south of Billings.  It is nice to build things when cost is no object.  I stepped into the lobby and a nice lady behind the desk asked if she could help me.  “I’m here for a Christmas tree permit,” I said.

“Fine,” she answered.  “I will need to see a photo ID and you will have to sign in.”   

I tried to flash her my “you’ve-got-to-be-kidding” face, but she smiled, so apparently my expression came across more like “Merry Christmas.”  We Christian conservatives are so happy, happy, happy, we have a hard time mimicking perpetually, pissed, progressives.  I showed her my driver’s license, signed the book, and she handed me a hall pass before sending me to the proper office.  I purchased three permits, returned the pass and pondered photo ID thing as I drove home.  Witnessing the ruling class insulate themselves from the unwashed is America’s new normal.  Granted, the receptionist wasn’t as intimidating as a blue-gloved TSA agent performing a pat-down, but her purpose was to regulate public access to the bureaucracy.  This should bother you and it brings me to my point. 

Our nation has been purposely split into the ruling class and the unwashed with the former reserved for progressive politicians and unelected bureaucrats.  Your life is more controlled by whims of the king’s appointees than by your personal decisions.  Remember, a photo ID is not needed to vote, but it is required to purchase a Christmas tree permit in our brave new world.  A recent study revealed 40 percent of millennials support government regulation of speech, so America’s freshly indoctrinated will soon aggressively embrace a new agency regulating “government-speak.”  Aldous Huxley warned us of this in his 1932 utopia novel, Brave New World, and here we are.  This Christmas, ask Santa to empty your stocking of all the Marxist policies imposed on us by progressives and instead fill it with the limited government principles gifted us by our founders.