Those who think liberty is childish invariably see themselves as the parent. Writes RP:

I work at small air charter company. The FAA was inspecting our facilities and found what they thought was a violation of the regulations (it wasn’t, we knew it but they were too stupid to know it). Our reaction was “ho-hum, no big deal.”

At a meeting a few days later one of the inspectors brought it up again. He expressed their astonishment at our reaction. He told us that usually when they discover something like this the responsible parties fall all over themselves trying to placate the inspectors and assure them that the problem will be taken care of, steps will be taken to make sure it never happens again and that there will be remedial meetings and training and manual revisions. He actually said, “You know, it’s like when a parent discovers his child doing something wrong. The child will do anything to please the parent and avoid punishment. When we left the premises at the end of the day we had not seen that reaction from anyone. We were amazed.”

There it is. They think the relationship between the government and the governed is the same as that of parents and children. This is the first time I have seen them be so open about it.