When I looked at the front page of the Star-Bulletin on a recent Sunday, on the top it said, "Paper, plastic or politics?" and I laughed. Our state government is considering banning plastic shopping bags. What choices do they want to take away from us next? The federal government recently passed legislation that will ban incandescent light bulbs and force carmakers to build smaller cars than people want.

Don't get me wrong, I believe recycling and helping the aina is a wonderful thing to do, but not when you're forced to. The government's public face is the equivalent of charismatic used car salesmen, but if anyone defies their edicts, thugs with guns will show up to take away your choices. Politicians think they know better than we do about how we should live our lives. Let people choose how to live and what to do, not a bunch of socialists! Although our Constitution specifies a tiny government, written by people who from bitter experience with the British monarchy had a profound distrust of government, we've somehow strayed from this wise vision and elected a bunch of legislators who feel we are so stupid we need them to tell us how to live. Let people choose what they want, not those people who literally force you to give them money or their minions will show up at your door with guns, take your property and throw you in jail. What is happening to America?

Janae Rasmussen is an eighth-grader at the University Laboratory School in Kailua. This article originally appeared as a "Letter to the Editor" in the Honolulu Star Bulletin.