Government is a dangerous servant. . . as the American left has recently discovered.
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A simple question. . .
Tag: big government
“Everybody knows that ordinary Americans are a bunch of idiots,” a Health and Human Services official told Benjamin Ginsberg. “Why do you need to do a survey to find that out?”
Actually, he was not surveying Americans for their IQs and knowledge levels. He was surveying Washington insiders. Like her.
She hadn’t been listening.
Ginsberg and co-author Jennifer Bachner have a new book out, What Washington Gets Wrong (2016). “We found that public officials,” Ginsberg told C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb last month, “the people who really govern this country . . . don’t think much of ordinary Americans.”
Surprise, surprise. This has been an “open secret” for some time. Washington insiders “are wealthier,” “better educated,” and “think ordinary Americans don’t really know very much.” More alarmingly, they think that the government should “not pay too much attention to what ordinary folks think.”
According to Ginsberg and Bachner, this has been a long time coming. Progressive Era reformers transformed government in an effort to make it less partisan.
They succeeded — only to make it less accountable and less . . . American.
In ancient times, great administrative states were run by eunuchs, men gelded to curb their appetites the better to serve their sovereigns (pharaohs; emperors; kings). Not their own interests.
Is it time to bring back the practice?
Just joking. Instead, Congress can tame the bureaucratic leviathan it has created by trimming its ranks and pulling back on pay and benefits until they’re more in line with the private sector.
Let’s hope the House’s recent passage* of the REINS Act, requiring congressional approval of major regulations, is a sign that Congress’s lackadaisical attitude about the bureaucracy is changing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Let’s hope the Senate follows suit.
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Don’t Worry!
Bernie’s plan will SAVE MONEY through Government Efficiency!
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Caution: Do Not Over-Feed Government!
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I have friends who call themselves anarchists. Their theory? Government is always merely an open conspiracy of some to live at the expense of others.
Republicanism, on the other hand, proposes that if we limit government, we can hone it down to the level where there is no conspiracy, and everything the government does can plausibly help everybody.
Not just a few insiders.
Socialism is the opposite notion. Socialists seek to grow government so far that it “naturally” serves everybody, not only the few. It’s all about “equality,” you see.
Here’s what we know for sure: socialism, when really tried, is so awful that it makes anarchy-as-chaos sound good.
The latest socialist horror is Venezuela, which is getting worse every day. Now hospitals place newborns in cardboard boxes. There are no other supplies.
But that’s not all. The special program for feeding everybody? It’s now mainly for feeding just those close to the government — precisely as my anarchist friends say all government is:
Six months after the creation of the Local Committees of Supply and Production (Clap) that is designed to “distribute food directly to the people,” the government has decided to change its approach by threatening those using the program.
The Venezuelan government announced that it will suspend delivery of food packages to those who criticize its policies.
Are socialist out to prove anarchists right?
I bet most of my readers still put some hope in limiting government to serve all. Venezuelan socialism demonstrates how badly the opposite idea is, showing us that serving everybody by total government just decays into the folks allied closely with government warring against everybody else . . . who starve in plain sight.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Questions Answered:
What is the difference between a republic and a socialist state?
What do anarchists think of government?
What happens when government tries to do everything for everybody?
The Next Question:
How do we convince well-meaning socialists that total government cannot work for the benefit of everybody? (Since the examples of the USSR, Communist China, and Venezuela haven’t worked so far.)
The “unexpected” Donald Trump presidential victory has put the folks at The Gray Lady a bit out of sorts.
Heather Wilhelm at the National Review pokes and prods at the absurdities of the New York Times’s cultural cluelessness. And ably enough. So I’ll stick to The Times’s recent “six views” of America’s ideological divide:
Julie Turkewitz recognizes two well-insulated informational bubbles at play. Nothing too controversial — or very deep.
Campbell Robertson muses upon the dominance of the “elites” against which Trump’s insurgents rebel, noting that “the elites are the still the ones who get to decide who gets to be elite.”
Laurie Goodstein takes on religious culture, making much of divergent spiritual outlooks, left and right.
Julia Preston peers at immigration and the prospect of sending a message by building a “wall.”
In the manner of the other five, Sheryl Gay Stolberg digs up real-world people — as does our speechifier-in-chief, Barack Obama — to lightly probe questions of assimilation versus multiculturalism.
Manny Fernandez concludes with a (yawn) discussion of giving and taking offense.
They all miss the underlying structural basis for the divide.
On one side: folks working in the private sector — or local governments and charities, or at home — who have seen the world pass them by in terms of income and security.
On the other: government workers and consultants (and other college grads) who make more, on average, than their “real world” counterparts.
The latter has advanced as a class; the former remain in stasis . . . at best.
A mystery?
No — it’s the predictable result of what Thomas Jefferson called “the parasite institutions now consuming us.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Original (cc) photo by diana MĂRGĂRIT at Flickr