A horrifying aspect of modern life is how nearly daily threats to fundamental freedoms and human rights nearly require that citizens become politically aware and active.

Here we are struggling to put food on the table, cultivate a civilized private life, support things we care about, manage our households, and otherwise meet all the challenges of modern life, and then some jerk politician pushes some dangerous legislation that poses an all-out attack on everything we take for granted.

The government seems determined to turn out the lights on the digital age. And this is with or without SOPA or the other bills that were only this week shouted down by the global digital community on Blackout Wednesday. The very next day, after support for that legislation collapsed after an impressive mass protest, the FBI and the Justice Department demonstrated that they don’t have to pay any attention to all this silly clamor. Congress, legislation, polling, debates, politicians, the will of the people — it’s all a sideshow to these people.

There is a scene in the Parable of the Talents in which the returned master berates the shabbiest of his three servants. Discovering that he had buried his seed capital in the ground, the master says: “You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.” The servant is then thrown outside “into the darkness,” where he faces “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Gary’s Note: Patrick Cox explains how and why the intellectuals keep getting it wrong about the government and the free market…and how as the states the world over hit insurmountable debt crises, you can stand to profit enormously.

First, a correction. A Bar regular writes…

“Joe Lieberman is not a Democrat. He is an independent, as he resigned from the Democratic Party. Don’t you ever check things out before stating them as facts?

“Wish you the best with your paranoia,”

“– Steve K”

This comes from one of our most-faithful, unswerving, persistent critics. A man who has dutifully read our material for years so he can tell us why we’re wrong about the economy, politics, art, science and love.

Last week’s violent government attack on the hugely popular site Megaupload — the U.S. government arresting Belgian citizens in New Zealand, of all places, and stealing at gunpoint servers bank accounts and property — has sent shock waves through the entire digital world.