Montana seems to bring out the quirky side of folks as recently happened with Christopher the trucker. Apparently, Chris was in a squabble with upper management, so he unhitched his refrigerated trailer leaving 37,000 pounds of frozen chickens to fend for themselves in the September heat at a Flying J west of Missoula. The birds struggled valiantly, but eventually succumbed to climate change and turned the inside of the cargo trailer into a nasty, necrotic, fowl soup. Health Department officials discussed possible solutions, none of which were particularly glamorous. Eventually, the mass of rotten flesh was off-loaded into a pit at the landfill; not the best day to be a loader operator with a keen sense of smell, but someone had to do it.

This incident reminded me of the time I performed a necropsy on a cow which had already been dumped at the rendering plant along with other decomposing critter casualties. The stench of rotting flesh stuck to my skin like paint and even though my exam took less than a minute and I showered afterwards, I oozed the aroma for days. Only my dog was happy to see me that evening and thinking of her reaction sparked today’s column.

Picture this: You are trailing a couple hundred yearling steers through a mountain pasture when the herd stumbles upon a rotting carcass. Each species reacts in a very predictable fashion. The steers will circle the dead critter and at a distance of about six feet, they will stand with their noses to the ground and stare at it determining if it is good, bad or just different. Your horse will snort, blow and shy sideways a full 50 feet before reaching the bone pile. He recognizes the stench of death and will run over anything to put distance between him and it. Lastly, your cow dog will sprint to the middle of the mass of maggots, drop a shoulder and roll in it as giddy as can be. If there is doggie aroma therapy, this is it, so let’s let him enjoy himself while I appear to change subjects.

This is the silver anniversary of President Johnson’s War on Poverty, a conflict carrying a price tag of 22 trillion dollars; an amount three times higher than the combined costs of all other wars since 1776. With today’s poverty rate nearly the same as it was in 1964 you would think the war was lost, but it was a raging victory as 100 million Americans are now dependent on government aid; exactly as designed. More accurately, this was a War FOR Poverty and it has morphed America into three classes: Those enslaved by dependency, the producers enslaved by debt and the ruling class enjoying raw, unbridled power. Now I will make my point by blending these three classes into my story of the steers stumbling onto the rotting carcass.

The dead animal represents American liberty. It wasn’t a lightning strike which killed her; Marxist wealth redistribution infected her in the late 1800s and ate her from the inside out. President Woodrow Wilson’s progressive income tax was the first clinical sign she was infected. FDR’s Social Security and LBJ’s Great Society programs meant the disease had gone septic. There were moments when liberty looked like she might recover, such as when President Clinton signed off on welfare-to-work, but this temporary remission was recently rescinded by President Obama. Liberty is dead.

The dependent class is represented by the curious steers. They suspect the death of liberty is bad, they just don’t know why. The producing class is the horse. The stench of death barely touched their nostrils before they knew things were wrong. In fear, hopelessness and disgust, they ran away. This leaves the ruling class; the dog who knew this would be the perfect day for a roll in a rotting carcass and they bask in the glory of their moment.

If you disagree, name a single progressive who regrets destroying our great American experiment in freedom. For the ruling class, the 22 trillion dollars was the nominal cost of replacing liberty with an intrusive, controlling government. Think before you vote because it took over a century to create this mess and like 37,000 pounds of rotting chicken it won’t be cleaned up overnight.