My youngest daughter and I were talking the other day trying to remember Ayn Rands 4 things that are the sign of a dictatorship. We've had this discussion before and I always have a hard time, like a mental block against being able to recall the fourth thing (plus I can't remember which article/book its in to look it up in and I can't remember it here either so I can't tell you where to go look for it. It is there somewhere). Anyway as part of this discussion she said a few years back when she was a student at the University (of Minnesota) she saw a traffic sign over by there that made her do a double take and she said the person who designed that sign has a totalitarian mentality. I asked what the sign was and she said it was a sign at a stop light that didn't say NO TURN ON RED (in Minnesota, turning right on red is a permissible exception to the prohibited: thou shalt not go on red, be it right, left or straight ahead) but rather it said:
RIGHT TURN ONLY
ON GREEN OR
ON GREEN ARROW.

I had to think about this for a second to understand it, plus I've never in my entire life seen such a sign and she reassured me that yes, it was for real, she had seen it. And I had to concurr: given the choice between a simple 'No Turn On Red' and the significantly wordier version "they" used, I have to conclude that that traffic sign was designed (even if somebody tries to blame it on a computer, some-person some where had to make a judgement that resulted in selecting the sign) by a person with a Totalitarian mentality.

An ex-Minnestota State Legislator acquaintance of mine when presented with this scenario and challenged to make sense out of it said he really couldn't think of anything except, maybe since it was over by the University that maybe they were trying, testing something out. He didn't mean what I'm currently thinking...even I am not going to be that paranoid...(it wasn't a trial balloon by the "shadow" university...was it?)

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