Forget about the Congress authorizing the "big government" to bail out the Wall Street.
Forget about the "big government" spying on its own citizens under the Patriot act.
Forget even about Mike Huckabee accusing Barack Obama of promoting the ultimate threat that comes from Europe: "big government", grabbing liberty and destroying America's achievements.
The surest sign of the big government is nailed to the wall of the passageway leading to the Oak Street Beach in Chicago.
Warning that the beach is closed when there is no lifeguard on duty (it isn't: happy moms take their kids to the lake in the moonlight and companies of youngsters drink merrily) it asks the citizens to report other - disobeying - citizens to the police.
For all its liberties, this country seems obsessed with signs ordering people what to do and not. Just look at the abundance of excessive announcements.
This big government is patronizing its citizens like few others, and people do not seem to care.
Signs above traffic lights in New York tell drivers not to "block the box", as if anyone really did not know it was wrong. Announcements on Chicago trains ask riders to "keep your belongings off the seat next to you so that others may sit down", as if anyone would not know that in a packed train people are to be preferred to bags. Museum halls and restaurants display warnings on the number of people inside a room that is "dangerous and unlawful", as if customers would count the ones who are already in before entering.
No other Western country, with a possible exception of Britain, also prolific in signs, does not seem to mistrust the intelligence and goodwill of its citizens as does America. (In fact, some European countries even remove traffic signs making drivers think and thus reducing the number of accidents.)
And there is a good reason, of course. For all the innovative spirit, for all the critical thinking encouraged in schools and for the record number of Nobel prize winners, probably every foreigner has countless anecdotes to tell how clueless Americans can be when they are faced with situations that are only slightly outside the bounds of everyday routines.
Even my most favorite ones would take countless pages to tell.
So there it is, the big government, the force for good, the all-predicting guardian of order, taking care of everything in a very public way, allowing people to go about their affairs. A homo no longer needs to be much sapiens.
Of course, everybody sticking to one's own business might explain the legendary efficiency of the country where the conveyor belt was invented. But it also might explain legendary ignorance.
And a dangerous one at that.
The 9-11 terrorists breached this big government precisely because of their imagination and thinking outside the box. The government answer was, of course, more signs and more instructions what to do and what not.
But in New York's La Guardia airport the other week, I witnessed how a security officer seemed to blindly follow the rules and thus failed to check an object large enough to hide ten machine guns.
I did not say anything - there was no sign asking me to.
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