I just dropped off my little 10/22 at the gun shop today to get it checked out. While there, I overhear an older couple talking about their 10 acres. The guys behind the counter commented that they're about the last ones left with that kind of acreage in the particular county. I injected myself into the conversation and suggested that "10 acres is pert near heaven around here." I asked the old man of probably going on 90 years of age if the kids will get the property and therefore keeping the farm in the family (he had many more acres when he bought it). He went on to tell me how his only son hasn't been seen in these parts since 2003 so…probably not.

Here's the meat of the story. This old man bought the farm from his aunt in 1962. At the time, it was a full on working farm with cows, pigs and chickens including a slaughtering operation. This farm also happens to be on the Chesapeake Bay and he had a successful crabbing operation with refrigerated trucks as well as middlemen coming up from the Carolinas to purchase his crabs for resale.

Well, wouldn't you know, the goobermint (hat tip to RE) came to the farm and told him "things have changed (many years after he bought the place and no, there wasn't gonna be any grandfathering either) and he can no longer operate his butchering business." He told me he asked these goons what they would do if he didn't stop. Of course, said goons said they would close his farm. He told them he "weren't gonna stop butcher'n my cows." He waited before continuing to butcher. Of course the goons came back and asked him if he'd been butcher'n. He told me "I ain't no liar, so I told them I had been." Well, I'm sure you know the rest of the story but just in case…He now has only 10 acres left and the entire farmland around him is built up with McMansions. Of course, the taxes are kill'n him and his lovely wife but he says, "I work every day and I'm almost dead so, so what." I told him that, imo, it's the corporations working through the goobermint (hat tip to RE) that shut him down.

This is how they win and will continue to win. Some of it is done slowly. And guess what, we don't know the half of it. Ask my 20 something year old girls if they care about this story and they'd look at you like "Huh?" But guess what, we don't know what we've lost either. Well, maybe we do but we didn't experience it firsthand. The level of freedom that has been lost since 1776 or whenever you want to go back to is ginormous. Simply huge.

They win.