On "feeling less free"

Yesterday I wrote about a conversation with a cabbie from Afghanistan who loves America but who feels “less free” here than he used to.

We were talking about small laws and the encroachment of the state into our personal lives.

In response I got an interesting email from an Aussie gent part of whose email I must redact for his own privacy:

[Several] months ago I returned home to my home in. . .Australia, from the Middle East, where I had been deployed on operations. [It] is a generally left-voting city, and I was quickly struck by how deeply the state had intruded into our private lives – I had never noted it before. In [the Middle East], there had been rules to keep us safe and to ensure mission success, but at home, there were many rules, some quite onerous, whose sole “justification” is an intent to make the citizenry “good”. For example. . .in my city, I am not allowed to have a front fence. The theory is that a lack of a front fence will encourage me to socialise more often with my next door neighbours. Without addressing the dubious prospects of this law succeding in its stated aim, it is a rank injustice to deny me the use of my front yard for anything other than ornamental purposes.

About a fortnight ago, I was having a polite chat. . .with a lady whom I did not know well. I made the observation that I felt in some ways less free in [his city] than in [the Middle East], and she mentioned that she had felt the same way after moving here from [another state in Australia]. My wife informed me afterwards that the lady is married to a senior Labor Party activist, who is likely to win a seat at the next election, and who is deeply committed to socialist policies. It interested me that a person so intimately connected with building an intrusive state should feel oppressed by it like I do; I had assumed that it was my conservative temperament which was rebelling. I wonder how common this response is on the left? Do you have any insights?

You know, I might…but not just yet. I’m still trying to plow through my email and the brain is misfiring. How about you guys, any insights?