Tuesday, January 27, 2015

MEANING OF LIMITED GOVERNMENT

Watching the twists and turns of political arguments take is interesting if not at times alarming. What I see is a growing hate for government of any kind. If this hater ever fully matures, it would be a disaster in the world of a seven billion people. The truth is that deep down almost everyone know this will never happen. There are a few people who are caught up in webs of self-deceit; those who reinforce their unhappiness with government by restricting themselves to listening to what they want to believe. Such as those who listen to Fox News or read Personal Liberty Digest soon sincerely believe they should go out and dig a deep hole in their back yard,  stock it with food enough to last for years, and buy assault weapons—utter nonsense.  

The theme running thought the political world for centuries, if not from the being of humankind, is the individual versus the group. The people digging a hole in their back yards are the extreme individualist. In a way it is a tacit admission they cannot isolate themselves from the group, the rest of the world; they are living a lie. Digging a hole with an antenna sticking up is an admission that the radio they listen to or the TV the watch or the road s they drive on, etc are their because of others.   

I have been reading reviews of past presidents. What stands out is how often they say in one form or another that the recognize human beings want to be “governed as if the are individuals”. This is the impossible dream. Every person in society can do what they want to do, when, where and how they want to do it, which is some kind of a false utopia. Digging a hole in the ground yields exactly the opposite result.


Ronald Reagan, a man I despise for a number of reasons (see, Reagan, Someone Else’s Hero on this blog site) but especially because his narrow mindedness about how economics works put us on the path to income disparity. He dug the hole of trickle down economics (Milton Freidman, and John Wayne were his idols). The amazing thing is that he said, “We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And that makes it special among the other nations of the earth.” Could it bed that after saying all those things he famously said about hating government, he recognized we need governance. Remember, “The most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Put these two phrases side-by-side and you realize the government he wanted would be in “his” hands. This is the ultimate definition of limited government. A person who digs a whole in his backyard wants the same thing Reagan wants. I say, dig a hole for him but bury him face down and let him dig; the rest of us want to live with others in an altruistic world.     

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