What will finally be the last straw?

There is a name for what the government did to the Washington Redskins last week. It is called extortion.

Extortion, as defined by Merriam-Webster’s, is the crime of getting money from someone by the use of force or threats. I much prefer the definition in the 1828 dictionary compiled by Noah Webster himself: “The act or practice of wresting any thing from a person by force, duress, menaces, authority, or by any undue exercise.”

You probably heard the story about how the U.S. Office of Patents and Trademarks has canceled the Redskins’ trademark on the team name because the team’s name and logo is supposedly “disparaging” to Indians.

As the Washington Post said in its coverage, “The ruling’s main impact is as a cudgel by an increasingly vocal group of Native Americans, lawmakers, former players and others who are trying to persuade team officials to change the name.”

Cudgel. That is another nice word, well-chosen by the Post’s reporter. Again from Webster’s, 1828: “A short thick stick of wood, such as may be used by the hand in beating.”

And make no mistake, it is not so much Native Americans who are wielding this cudgel, but the federal government itself, in a misbegotten effort to beat Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder until he gives up his team’s 77-year hold on the name and tradition because it offends some small sliver of society. 

I can think of no more clear example of wresting a thing from someone by use of “authority” than this attempt at theft through bureaucracy. Remember, this is a mascot that has served the football team since 1937 and on which the team has built its reputation for excellence.

If anyone is disparaged by the use of the Redskins logo, it is the opponents who have many times been put to shame by the team’s fierce play on the field. Obviously the team mascot was selected not because people DON’T respect Indians as warriors, but because they do. To argue otherwise turns reality on its head.

What this is all about is nothing more than political strong-arming in order to usher in the brave new world of politically correct and progressively approved social engineering. Divide and conquer. Just as the Obama administration used the IRS to cudgel (again, what a great word to describe the abuse of authority rampant in our federal government) conservative Tea Party groups into either silence or irrelevance as political organizations, so too did the patent office try to silence Redskins owner Dan Snyder from exercising his right to make money by venerating what used to be called without disdain the Noble Savage. For further edification regarding the Nobel Savage, see the novel “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. But for frightening parallels to the modern-day tyranny we suffer a long train of abuses under, read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. 

Perhaps the closest correlative in Rand’s prophetic novel to the extortion being waged against the Redskins is when the weasely Dr. Ferris visits the inventor-industrialist Hank Reardon to inform him that the government expects him to deliver 5,000 tons of his revolutionary new Reardon Metal in order to avoid being prosecuted on trumped-up charges and having his reputation and business be ruined.

“It should not be difficult for you to see where your interests lie and to act accordingly,” Ferris tells Reardon, assuming that his appeal to pecuniary interest will outweigh any inclination of Reardon to do what is right.

“In my youth, this was called blackmail,” Reardon says.

Ferris thinks he is on the verge of victory over the inventor and gloats that the government had always known it would defeat him sooner or later because it had passed a series of laws solely for the purpose of bringing to heel those rugged individualists who aspire to live free or die. Here is the excruciatingly accurate passage from “Atlas Shrugged”:

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?’ said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against — then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it.

You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

A nation of law-breakers! Is that really the game? Think about the maze of impossible-to-understand tax laws. Think about the nonsensical 2,000-page Affordable Care Act, and the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations that it has spawned. Think about carbon credits and all the endless regulations that businesses quixotically spend millions of dollars to obey when it is well nigh impossible to do so. Maybe what they, what all of us, should be doing now is instead writing a new Declaration of Independence, or following the original one:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

We are not safe. We are not happy. The only question now is: How long are we going to take it?