Every February 2nd, a groundhog pops out of the ground. If he sees his shadow, we get six more weeks of winter. That's the folklore. But all is not as it seems.

To begin with, that's not even the complete lore. What happens if he doesn't see his shadow? Originally it meant we'd have only 42 more days of winter. But as anybody familiar with Douglas Adams knows, six times seven is 42, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Six weeks is exactly 42 days. What gives?

The groundhog tradition has its root in the fifth century when Rome fell to Attila the Hun. Attila's people believed that certain animals had special powers on days halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It was also believed that hibernating animals like bears and groundhogs who woke up too early would go back to sleep for six more weeks. The falling of Rome is today one of the biggest events in the history of the world. Imagine what it must have felt like back then to see your entire empire collapse nearly overnight.

What would you do if you were invaded by a foreign people with strange beliefs? If you could, you'd ridicule them, but secretly and quietly, in a way they don't notice, much like Soviet authors used metaphor and analogy to sneak digs at the Communists past the censors. The freedoms of speech and expression are among any military government's first casualties. Back then, the Romans were still on the Julian calendar, and the spring equinox fell on March 16, exactly six weeks after February 2. The Romans came to call it Hedgehog Day. All is not as it seems. It was a joke. Humor is the last defense of a free man.

But that's not all. The groundhog, also known as the woodchuck, is not a hog, and has nothing to do with wood. It comes from the Narragansett word wuchak.

The Narragansett are a once-flourishing Native American tribe that controlled parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island for thousands of years, probably dating back to the same fifth century when Atilla was conquering Rome. In addition to the woodchuck, we use many other words borrowed from the Narragansetts, including squash, succotash, papoose, powwow, and quahog, the clam and Rhode Island city made famous by Family Guy.

What happened to the Narragansett tribe? Why are there now less than 3,000 remaining? Thanks go to King Philip's war. But remember: all is not as it seems. King Philip was neither a king nor named Philip. He was Metacomet, the leader of the allied Native Americans from southern New England who fought the English in 1675. Part of the cause for the war was the demand by the Puritans that the Indians turn over all their firearms. Self-defense, along with free speech, is always a top casualty of iron-fist rulers. King Philip's war was probably the bloodiest ever waged in North America. One in ten people of both sides were wounded or killed. For comparison, the Bubonic plague, the worst killer of humans ever, killed one in three people. And to bring it all full circle, the Bubonic plague was likely carried not by rats as commonly assumed, but by marmots like our friend the groundhog.

What's amazing is that our founding fathers recognized these important freedoms and made sure, as best they could, that our government would not infringe on them. Yet here we are, with our freedom to bear arms restricted in many ways, and our freedom to speak being squeezed out bit by bit.

The latest assault on our freedom of speech comes on both a federal level, thanks in large part to our Representative in Congress, Republican Christopher Shays, and on a state level right here in Connecticut, as various laws have now been proposed to put an end to robocalls, those annoying automated political phone calls.

When I ran against Shays, and Democrat Diane Farrell, this past election, I was both a user of robocalls, and a victim of their abuse. I used an automated program to call a small sample of registered voters to poll them on who they would vote for. I had to do it to show the few debate organizers who wanted to exclude me from their events that I had solid support, but it ended up not making a difference. They only wanted the two ruling parties represented at their debates, which turned out to be far less interesting than the seven debates in which I did participate. And I heard that other robocalls were placed by somebody, we still don't know by who, to tell people not to listen to what I say, after I ran several ads showing there was essentially no difference between my opponents, or Democrats and Republicans in general, when it came to questions of taxes or the war in Iraq. Those ads are still available on my campaign website.

Reportedly the robocall about me said it came from the Diane Farrell campaign but she told me personally her campaign hadn't authorized any robocalls at all, let alone that one, and I believe her. We also received word from the Shays campaign that they hadn't done any robocalls either, and I believe them too.

Theft and deceit and fraud are already illegal and I'm sure if I wanted to sue somebody, we could dig up who was responsible. The two proposed laws that Shays is co-sponsoring on a federal level and that are also under discussion for our state are similar to each other. They seek to prohibit “politically oriented recorded messages made to telephone numbers on the Do-Not-Call registry.”

Seems reasonable, right? The calls are annoying and if we can make them illegal when the recipient has already optionally registered with the government's do-not-call list, it's a great thing, right? But remember: all is not as it seems.

These pieces of legislation add to the already existing campaign regulations that limit donations, force campaigns to file personal information of their supporters, and insist on stupid disclaimers like “I approve this message.” Bit by bit, the Democrats and Republicans are making it so that only approved candidates can run for office. It is already nearly impossible to run unless you belong to one of their parties, even though more people are registered Independent.

Isn't voting the bad guys out our last defense against corruption? We should make it easier, not harder, for people to speak to each other and contact each other. Anybody can get caller ID and choose not to pickup anonymous calls. There shouldn't be a government-run do-not-call registry at all. Would you pay your phone company to guarantee you don't receive any telemarketers or robocalls, ever? Obviously such a service is possible. If you wouldn't pay but want the benefit, why should someone else pay for you through their taxes?

The government's role should be to defend and maximize our freedoms, not sell them for political gain. We should eliminate the obsolete telephone taxes to slash our monthly bills, get rid of NSA restrictions on satellites so we can have better cell coverage, remove any law protecting telephone monopolies so we have more choice, and keep the Internet free so we have better service by preventing regulations such as the Orwellianly named “net neutrality” laws.

The governments wants to twist our tongues so we can't speak in a way that offends them. The most famous tongue-twister of all is, of course, about our February friend. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? How many freedoms would a politician limit if a politician could limit freedoms?

The point is that woodchucks don't chuck wood and politicians shouldn't be able to limit our freedoms.

But who do we turn to when the ones who are supposed to defend our freedoms against all enemies, foreign and domestic, are the very ones who are taking them away?

This Groundhog day, it's time for us to awake from our political hibernation and open our eyes to the shadows that Washington has been casting over us for far too long. It's time to end our two-party winter.

And if you wake up and don't see anything different, just remember: all is not as it seems.

phil@maymin.com
Appeared in Fairfield County Weekly on February 2, 2007