When I was catching up with a mentor of mine who has practiced psychiatry for decades, I asked her what prompted her to uproot her life from California and move to Florida a few years ago.
“Well,” she joked, “it certainly wasn’t for the humidity.”
California had been home. Her friends were there. She had built a successful practice, knew the community, and loved the state’s natural beauty. Leaving meant starting over professionally and personally. It was not a decision she made lightly.
I assumed there had to be a compelling opportunity waiting for her in Florida. Instead, she told me it was something far less tangible, but to her, far more important.
She explained that throughout most of her career, she had never considered herself particularly political. She wasn’t someone who spent her time debating elections or following legislative battles. Her focus was simple: helping patients. But over the years, she began feeling that government policy was quietly reshaping what happened inside the therapy room.
She described growing uneasy with California’s evolving laws and policies governing minors, parental involvement, and confidentiality. In her view, they placed psychiatrists in an increasingly difficult position, one where the traditional balance between therapist, patient, and parent had fundamentally changed. Regardless of the intentions behind those policies, she believed they required her to practice differently than she had for most of her career.
Listening to her, I was reminded that former President Ronald Reagan’s skepticism of government was never simply about budgets or bureaucracy. It was about boundaries. He believed that every expansion of government authority carried with it the risk of shrinking the spaces where individuals, families, churches, and communities had once exercised their own judgment. Private decisions became public debates, and professional discretion yielded to political direction.
The line is often remembered as a punch line: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Sitting across from my mentor, though, it felt less like a joke and more like a warning about the slow and subtle erosion of private spheres.
What struck me most was not that my mentor had strong opinions. It was that someone who had never thought of herself as political had reached a point where politics entered her profession whether she welcomed it or not.
That conversation reminded me that political realignments rarely begin with campaign speeches or party platforms. More often, they begin when public policy becomes personal. A teacher notices a new classroom rule. A business owner confronts another regulation. A physician finds long-standing professional norms changing in response to new laws. Politics stops being something that happens in distant capitols and becomes something experienced in ordinary offices and Zoom calls, everyday encounters, and private decisions.
Whether one agrees with my mentor’s conclusions is almost beside the point. What stayed with me was her conviction that the therapist‘s office, a place built on trust, truth, and professional judgment, had become another arena for political conflict. To her, the issue was never partisan. It was about preserving the privacy of a profession and protecting the sanctity of conversations that had long existed beyond the reach of the state.
THE STATEWIDE BALLOT PROPOSITIONS THAT COULD HELP SAVE CALIFORNIA
I asked why she moved across the country, expecting to hear about taxes, weather, or retirement. Instead, I left thinking about something much larger. Reagan often spoke of government as a servant that is prone to becoming a master if its limits are forgotten. Whether one shares that philosophy or not, my mentor’s story illustrates why it continues to resonate with so many people. People rarely change because of campaign ads or cable news. They change when government reaches into places they once assumed belonged to family, faith, and free association.
Perhaps that is why Reagan’s famous words have endured for nearly four decades. They are not merely a criticism of government. They are a reminder that free societies depend upon boundaries. Every generation must decide where government should end and where private judgment, professional independence, and personal trust should begin.
Jenna Dougherty is a rising third-year law student, business graduate, and former member of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) 2022 gubernatorial campaign.