A
decade ago, a young, white goat scampered through
the sagebrush along the airstrip north of my house.
I don’t own a goat, so I walked over to
investigate and the skittish critter shot through
the fence before disappearing into a neighbor’s
brush patch.
Over the summer, I noticed the caprine
fugitive dragging a 10 foot chunk of yellow, nylon
rope attached to a blue collar.
One afternoon, a neighbor from a nearby
subdivision called saying they had caught my goat.
“I don’t own a goat,” I explained, “but if
you are talking about that little white one dragging
a yellow rope, untie the rope before it gets tangled
in the sagebrush and he dies of dehydration.”
I assumed
the goat would eventually find his way home and
since he wasn’t hurting anything his antics
continued with little notice.
My horses work on the ranch in the summer, but I
winter them here in Laurel and when I hauled them
home in October the mystery goat came running to
make new friends.
He never left again.
Over the winter, this undocumented ruminant
adopted the quirk that the one-inch pipe supporting
my windsock was his personal hiding place.
Every time he spotted our approach he would
sprint through the sagebrush to conceal himself
behind the pipe; an oddity earning him the name
Windsock.
When spring came and it was time for my ponies and
mules to return to the ranch, I debated what to do
with Windsock.
I chummed my horses into the corral with
grain and before long, Windsock jumped into the tall
feeder to finish the horse grain.
With his attention focused on the corn, I
crept up and snatched his horns.
“You are going with the horses,” I mumbled as
I man-handled him into the nose cone of the trailer.
The following fall, when it came time to haul my
ponies home to Laurel, Windsock was too large to
heft into the nosecone.
I loaded the
mules and horses before crowding him under the mass
of legs and slamming the trailer gate.
He worked his way to the front before bedding
down under my mule team.
Two hours later, once back in Laurel,
Windsock exploded from the trailer as happy as could
be.
I
continued this twice-a-year event until the
neighboring subdivision filled with houses, people
and flower gardens.
Windsock viewed fences as no more a boundary
than the goat honor system, so he began grazing the
nearby flora and fauna.
When neighbors called to pleasantly inform me
my goat was in their flower bed I answered, “I don’t
own a goat,” which was technically, but not
politically correct.
I had won my first election in 2006 by a
whopping three votes, so I worried Windsock’s flower
antics could endanger my 2008 re-election campaign.
I granted him year round residency at the
ranch and this brings me to my point.
Just as all my neighbors mistakenly thought Windsock
was my goat, most Americans erroneously think our
nation is a democracy.
It is not.
The framers of our Constitution feared the
limited life span of majority rule governments, so
they established a constitutional republic where the
primary function of government is to secure the
natural rights of the governed.
History has proven democracies begin fading
the instant the citizenry learn they can vote
themselves the bounty produced by the sweat of
others and America has entered a democracy driven
death spiral.
With promises of 90 percent tax rates on the
producing class, Democrat presidential candidate
Bernie Sanders is whipping up a feeding frenzy in
the dependency class.
He is leading polls in Iowa and New
Hampshire.
Like Windsock blinded while feeding on free
corn, Americans are equally blinded by promises of
free stuff.
Democracy is a trap with no escape.
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