As a naval officer my father grew accustomed to obedience, and he never seemed to recover from that expectation. My mother often doubted the wisdom of his ways, and her noncompliance drove him to imperious monologues on the proper management of a household, to which she would listen patiently. When he had finished she would say "Yes, O Great White Father," and then return to the same activity that had inspired his peroration.

Occasionally I hear myself delivering similar dicta to the teenagers who inhabit my home, and with similar results. That should be no surprise, for the society of 2005 recognizes even less parental authority than that of 1965. Now schools and parents more often take instruction from children than vice versa, thereby effectively acknowledging the assumption of superior adolescent intelligence. Apparently, people are now thought to grow increasingly immature and irresponsible with age. Adults consult with children before deciding whether to regulate their behavior, while government micromanages adult society with hardly any consultation at all.

Late in July the House of Representatives voted to reauthorize the so-called Patriot Act. Only a few days before that vote I attended one of Congressman Jeb Bradley’s "town meetings," my congressional represenative in New Hampshire, at which I asked him whether he intended to vote for the reauthorization. He said he did, and then he launched into a defense of the various intrusions and impertinences of that insidious legislation. He noted repeatedly that a judge’s order was necessary before the government could snoop on American citizens. I asked him what comfort that offered, since the judge had no discretion to refuse the order.

"That’s not how I understand it," Bradley said.

In other words, Bradley did not understand the Patriot Act very well at all. A federal agent seeking, for instance, to tap a citizen’s telephone or bug his home is required by the Patriot Act only to "certify" that "information likely to be obtained by such installation and use is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." The judge is then required to issue a warrant for that surveillance, whether he believes that agent or not. Given the notorious dishonesty among federal officials in the Bush regime, we are left with precious little protection against Big Brother. Of course that poses no immediate threat to knee-jerk supporters of the Bush agenda like Jeb Bradley, but what if they should ever disagree -- however slightly -- with Bush, DeLay, & Co.?

Bradley’s blind support of legislation that he has obviously never read follows a congressional tradition. None of those who passeed the original Patriot Act could have read it, either, for it had not even been printed when they made their decisions. Like the politicians who create it, congressional legislation usually presents an image contrary to the reality behind it, so most federal laws carry unpleasant unintended consequences.

Unless the U.S. Senate shows better sense than the lower chamber, American citizens will continue to be less free than they were four years ago -- and not a bit safer. The Patriot Act has initiated a great deal of, expense, inconvenience, and injustice, but nothing in it has stopped a single terrorist action. When the new enemies of presidential cultivation respond to George Bush’s invitation to "bring it on" they will bring it on indeed, regardless of the freedoms that we have surrendered to appease our cowardly new national nature.

I heard of this latest congressional lunacy on my way to climb Galehead by way of the Twin Mountains. Only in such natural surroundings can one feel truly free from the madness of modern government. While resting at the Galehead hut, though, I got my first glimpse of the wheelchair ramp built a few years ago to meet provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In its usual wisdom Congress inadvertently imposed such a demand for the accommodation of any hiker who negotiates one of the precipitous access trails in a wheelchair. So far no one has done so without the aid of a platoon of attendants who basically carry them up the mountain and then stand admiringly by while the "hiker" wheels the final four feet up the ramp.

Our peerless leadership now intrudes even on that windswept ridge in New Hampshire's White Mountains, making absurd demands on the many to provide ineffective protection for the few. All hail the Great White Father.