Government as a Salmon Trap

Living here in the great Pacific Northwest (aka the PNW), salmon is part of our daily vocabulary. Usually the word arises as in "I'll have the King Salmon, please."  However, we PNWers have a more complex relationship with salmon ranging from the fishing rights of Native Americans to the destruction of damns along the Columbia and other rivers.

Little by little, the traps ensnare and trap salmon - and us.

What the salmon think about all this - from being served with rice pilaf to the aesthetics of fish ladders - is not known (though I have a hunch that the ladders trump the pans). I also suspect that they harbor no longings for the "salmon traps" of yore.  These were net traps which, like funnels, move the fish deeper through a series of one-way catchments. Of course, the salmon have no idea of what's going on - other than there seems to be a lot more friends in less and less space.  But, hey, water is water and swimming doesn't take much thought.

The folks over at The Independent Institute see the real meaning of these things and, in a recent article suggested that the salmon trap is a fitting analogy for the slow encroachment of government on freedom and liberty. From the article:

Like the narrowing opening through which the salmon enter the “hearts” of the traps, the ways out of people’s helplessness and dependence on the state are narrow and hard to locate. Moreover, going out as they came in flies in the face of their natural proclivity to live at others’ expense and care. As the salmon’s “mind” tells him not to turn back, so the human mind, especially when it has been bewitched by government propaganda and statist ideology, tells people not to turn back. Having lost the capacity for assuming individual responsibility, people are fearful of taking on such responsibility as their forebears did routinely. [Emphasis added]

 This is very apt. It is why Conservatives (and Libertarians, for that matter) become so alarmed at policies which extend entitlements, so-called government "protections," and a self-perpetuating bureaucracy at the incremental cost of individual choice and responsibility.  Like the salmon, we become entrapped by the State and are afraid to go back - to assume responsibility again.  Unless we find our courage again, we will, like the salmon, end up served with rice pilaf.