As long as the Left is so sincerely concerned about The Children, it is right and fitting to debate what poses a greater challenge to the welfare and healthy personal development of tots. In two separate cases of kids selling lemonade to earn a buck, we are confronted with a) a dope from the neighborhood with a bb-gun (illegally) making off with junior’s paltry profits; and b) 3 different dopes from 3 different local governments (legally) shutting enterprising kids down for not having gone through proper bureaucratic channels.
The first instance is normally called a “robbery” where the criminal perpetrator is the robber. The other is called a “shakedown” where the criminal perpetrators are pre-teens making money selling lemonade without paperwork, in one instance for charity and in another to buy something he thought his parents could not afford.
Riddle: which is worse? Being held up at gunpoint by a local teenage thug OR being held up by local bureaucrats of little use except to teach enterprising kids to heed Ronald Reagan’s warning about the nine most terrifying words in the English language? “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” There are many, many things in this world more deadly than a gun. As Woody Guthrie sang, “Some men rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.”