On Big Government

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Thursday

January 6, 2011

 
 

On Big

Government

 
 

The big government model is a wrong turn. As it takes over the responsibilities of the individual, it undermines personal morality by relieving the individual of accountability. It effectively eliminates competition, and thereby eliminates the chief motivator to excellence. All this costs a lot of money, too – it will all be paid for through the seizing and confiscation of privately, and legally, earned wealth.

If you think it’s all okay because it’s the right thing for government to do, that it’s the moral thing to do, the humane, altruistic, idealistic way to go, then you are a gullible dupe. In fact, of course, there is no moral obligation to be in favor of big government at all, or in favor of its various programs.

Big government is not what it claims to be – it says of itself that it’s helping the disadvantaged, the oppressed, but that’s just talk. It’s really a patronage system. It’s a system of favors sought and favors granted. As it grows bigger and more multi-faceted, it concomitantly increases its power to dole out largesse and it further ensconces itself and its members in a guaranteed life-style, sheltered from the empirical world.

For example, the issue of global warming – it clearly is false, exaggerated science, designed to lure more people into the tentacles of government, into being government clients, and is therefore designed to make them dependant on government. The same is true of Obama Care and gay marriage – a disingenuously emphasized issue is put before us, with a putative moral obligation to agree, but it’s all untrue.

In reality you are being taken for a ride: you give them your personal liberty and your personal integrity and the freedom of your mind in exchange for not much, just a subsidized life at the expense of the private sector.

This thinking seeps into our foreign policy, too. That is, a strong policy of international relations needs the will to seek outright victory at times over the neighborhood bully, and not just stand pat forging compromises with him (he is, after all, merely a child testing the limits of his parents).

But, with a government dedicated to favors and patronage and subsidies and clients, are we really capable of mustering the will to win from the Oval Office or from the State Department? Or will we rather just seek out more ways to grant favors and reach a paltry settlement with those who threaten us?

 

 

 

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