Embiggened Government
Everybody carries around in their head two notions of government. The government that does stuff for you. The government that does stuff to you, takes stuff from you. Everybody wants the former to thrive, the latter to be weakened and cut back. They are the same of course and the two notions not divisible. We see this is such formulations as JFK's: "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country", and in the Crito. I was thinking of this as I listened to P.J. O'Rourke talk up his latest book with Scott Simon P.J. O'Rourke's Advice? 'Don't Vote' : NPR . "Don't Vote" the book is called; relax P.J. we already know how you feel. His argument for smaller government is pragmatic. He imagines that government institutions become turgid if they are called upon to do too much. So it's best if they do nothing. The collecting and disbursing, allowing and forbidding face of governance is a better dichotomy than trying discern a natural role of government. Big things against little things: Armies, fire departments, OHSA regulations, food handling rules for restaurants, health care, Federal or local control (ie segregation) in our schools. This could never be consistently structured, the role of government compartmented. Everything is always changing, always in flux.
Reduced government equals no government. Making government ever smaller, ever weaker. You don't make power go away. Political power like other energys can neither be created or destroyed. It exists where ever there is a community of people. You haven't made control over your life disappear. You have just moved it from one vector, one set of hands to another. The real question is in whose hands this power will rest. Do you know who? Do you have any inroad, any leverage with them at all. One formal definition of governance is does it have a monopoly on coercive power. Once the nominal government becomes so weak as to no longer have a controlling monopoly on coercion, it is simply no longer the government. There is a governor to be sure, that which has the power of force. Groups achieving this will often stop short of dismantling the formal apparatus of government hailing its small and libertarian nature, remaining clandestine brokers of the possible. All costs go up, in this situation, the transaction costs of every bargaining node and deal point in a fractured society submerged in hidden rules. Look at huge amount of money, rich men's money, the small government and tea party proponents are spending in this election cycle to elect their set of politicians. There is money in the care-taking contract-dispensing remnants of a government.
What does that look like? It looks like Arizona: Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law : NPR. It looks like that Kyrcyz jet fuel deal, manned by a revolving iron-triangle of current and ex-officios, that the Pentagon insists on being kept under wraps and out of scrutiny.
The government seems likely now to turn over to obstructionists Boehner and McConnell. From Boehner: "This is not a time for compromise." From McConnell: "The single most important thing we want to achieve," he said, "is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Both of these quotes from the Washington Post's Dana Millbank - The Republican Party could use some adults. The aim was to cripple the economy's recovery, keep joblessness as high as possible until they could regain power; on the back the misery of lives made worse. This simply and openly is not ruling in the name of the people, but rule in the interests of a ruling class. Cynicism and betrayal in a tri-cornered hat. "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." This is the Simpson's teasing nod to the uneven and occasionally inarticulate nobility of mind of the founding fathers and their generation (and immediate successors) Lisa the Iconoclast - Wikipedia. Into what shrinking realms our reduced and trivial leaders take us now I cannot tell. There is nothing about a strong federal government inherently at odds with liberty. In a healthy society the government will be the size it needs to be to stabilize and mediate the surging and competing forces within. In an unhealthy society deliberately knife-nicking government's fetlocks will scarcely help.
10:18:25 AM  ;;
|
|
