Proposals for a Nation gone off--The Thesis

 A nation gone off

If we state at the beginning that our guides are individual self- determination and self governance,*  let us acknowledge that the list of items we may find wrong with this world of today will be nearly limitless, and that in general our ideals and in precious cases our reality is not a condition found easily among mankind.  

Power is the God worshipped by most and liberty is in its very definition the negation of such power.  Even if a government is established on principles of limited government and respect for the individual, the very presence of government will attract those in coming generations who by dint of their own desires will work against the foundational principles of what attracted them.  Such is the state we find ourselves in many several generations after our founding.  

Much good it should be said has been done by and through our government.  Slavery is banned.  Education, although a source of abiding controversy as to its funding, control and objectives, has brought the vast majority of Americans literacy and basic math skills.  And even in the city schools that cause so much consternation, the failure is less in the government than in the culture of those cities which for whatever perverse or prideful objectives seems to squander what opportunities are afforded -- and a great many are afforded in even the most meager education.  We have most importantly been free of foreign invasion or even influence although with the rise of China and its large holdings in US treasury bonds the latter virtue is today endangered.  

On the balance sheet of these qualified goods we should also note the rank social engineering the government is prone to (to satisfy the conscience and guilt of a few), the inordinate expense of education, the outsized power of public employee unions (when very few limbs have been mangled in the machines of bureaucracy), and the septic reality of the welfare state which is an affront to both individual dignity and liberty.  There are also troubling signs that the federal government is not what it appears when taken as a government of, by and for the people.  Take the recent controversies regarding immigration.  While we will make our specific views known in the appropriate place, when it is observed that the popular majority, the existing law, the stated promises of government officials (both to observe the laws and further the views of the public) all seem to favor limited and well-ordered immigration -- and yet the very opposite occurs -- we may well wonder what holds sway in our times if it is neither the people nor the laws nor the elected politicians.  What obscured, unaccountable force is at work?  What government is this?

A government that can seem little but an oppressive presence in the lives of each person who seeks to live freely, by their own conscience and who would form the world to that conscience within its own natural sphere.

A government that sows tares and reaps taxes.

A government that would provide a soft landing for every hard fall -- and push as many people as possible off the cliff.

A government that makes you pay for every slap in the face as it demonizes those on whom it relies most for its revenue, from cigarette smokers to the rich.

A government that holds as suspect every locus of free association:  of those it does not control, subsidize or benefit from.

A government for whom the issue of every political debate must coincide with a result prearranged to its own interests.

A government bent on importing a citizenry more compliant to its power.

A government dedicated not to the perpetuation of liberty but the perseverance of all those dependant forms of living that militate against the liberty of others.

A government that finds in human degradation the mother’s milk to its power.

A government grown ashamed of its birth.

A government that strives to be everywhere, to know all things and be all capable.

A government of the government, by the government and for the government.

A government that fancies itself a jealous god.

Yes, there is a “great deal of ruin in a nation” as an ancient sage once remarked but when the ruin has extended to liberty and limited government we are right to say that is a deal of ruin too much and take steps to prevent any further rot in what is as rare, precious and noble as human freedom and a government dedicated to its pursuit.  Let's begin with what most of our arguments come down to anyway, that measure of reality and measure of ruin, money.

--------

footnote:  * If socialism were perfectly and wholly voluntary, and not pursued under the auspices of the government, we would not object in the slightest.  Only associations that can be dissolved in a trice however are worthy of the name.  Government can never be dissolved in a trice.  Like death, it has the stench of permanence about it.