Big government is not our enemy

[Bravo Zulu]

In fact, a smaller government would make us less free, argues professor DOUGLAS J. AMY
Sunday, August 01, 2010

At every tea party rally, speakers passionately complain that government is the enemy of freedom. For them, the more government grows, the more our liberty shrinks. But is this really true?

In reality, few of our government programs -- even big government programs -- do anything to actually threaten anyone's freedoms. Nearly all of the common activities of the modern state -- building roads and highways, putting out fires, fighting disease, treating sewage, funding basic scientific research, providing medical care for the elderly, preventing crime, supplying clean water, feeding the poor, providing parks and recreational facilities, educating our children, forecasting the weather, sending out Social Security checks, and so on -- are not inherently coercive or oppressive at all. So it is simply mistaken to automatically equate more government with less freedom.

In addition, there is no necessary correlation between how large government is and how oppressive it is. Many dictatorships in developing countries, such as Haiti under the Duvalier family, have had very small public sectors with few social services. Authoritarian regimes don't need a large tax base -- just enough to support a police force and army.

In fact, freedom and very big governments can easily go hand in hand -- as they already do in many European countries. Belgium, for example, has a public sector almost twice the size of the United States as a proportion of its gross domestic product and has much more extensive health care, unemployment and pension programs. Yet Belgian citizens enjoy essentially the same rights and liberties as Americans. We see very few Belgian political refugees applying for asylum in the United States because they feel oppressed in their homeland.

But here's an even more important point: Government has often been the means for expanding the freedoms of ordinary Americans. One of the main reasons that government has grown so large in the last 75 years is that we have demanded that it do more to liberate us from harmful and oppressive conditions, such as economic insecurity, illness, discrimination and pollution.

Social Security has liberated millions of citizens from destitution in their old age. Public health efforts have freed all of us from devastating and deadly diseases like polio and smallpox. Because of laws banning housing discrimination, all families are now freer to live where they want. Public education and public universities have increased economic freedom and opportunity for hundreds of millions of Americans. Government-sponsored right-to-strike laws and workplace safety rules have freed countless American workers from oppressive and dangerous working conditions

So the reality of the modern democratic state has often been exactly the reverse of the contention of anti-government zealots: More government has often actually produced more freedom.

Tea partiers want to believe that if government were small and left us alone, we would all be freer to control our own lives. But this is often not the case. On our own, we are frequently powerless against the larger social and economic forces at work in our lives. As lone individuals, we are helpless to deal with such things as economic bubbles, worldwide epidemics, soaring college costs, stagnant wages and global warming. Faced with such large problems, our best option is to act collectively -- through government -- if we truly want to be the masters of our fate.

Ironically, if tea party activists get what they want -- a radically reduced government -- we would all be less free. We would have the illusion of freedom, but in reality we would be more at the mercy of the many outside forces that are currently buffeting out lives.

It would be like being dumped in the middle of the ocean in a row boat and being told that you are now free to go wherever you want. You might be the "captain" of your boat, but in all likelihood if the storms and the sharks didn't get you, the sunstroke and dehydration would.

Douglas J. Amy is professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College and the creator of governmentisgood.com.


Read more: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/10213/1076462-109.stm?cmpid=newspanel#ixzz0vKjA6Yqb

[democrat2thecore]

1. Guess it depends on the government - if it's 'good' - big is okay

Otherwise, watch out.

[villager]

2. Big government in cahoots with the corporate state, however -- is

n/t

[MajorChode]

3. Wingnuts really don't have a problem with big government

They have a problem when government is NOT in cahoots with commercial interests. In other words, if government is protecting the interests of consumers, it is 'big government'. If it's protecting commercial interests over the intersts of consumers, they have no problem with it. The whole 'big government' meme is nothing more than a trojan horse to pull on the puppet strings of their sub room temperature IQ constituency so they will support ideas that are contrary to their own best interests.

[iamjoy]

6. Not In Cahoots With THEIR Interests

it is not necessarily commercial interests. In other words, anytime the government is using its power to do something with which an individual personally disagrees, it is a threat to freedom.

[Sherman A1]

7. Precisely

They want Government in your bedroom, but not protecting you against Wall Street abuses or any other corporate scheme.

[MajorChode]

4. The really funny part is many Americans think they have more freedom

Many of those have never owned a passport and never will, yet they will wave their flags and curse everything that supports their own interests as "socialistic" whether it actually is or not.

America is actually one of the most oppressive countries I have ever experienced. Although there's some things I don't particularly like about some European countries, we can certainly learn a lot from them about what freedom actually means.

[upi402]

5. Gov't is bad, media is liberal

Propaganda is EZ peasy if ya got the cash and the media owners agree with your propaganda!

[Triana]

8. Big corporations who own the government are though. n/t

[Gravel Democrat]

9. The author convienently fails to mention...

the drug war

"...On our own, we are frequently powerless against the larger social and economic forces at work in our lives. As lone individuals, we are helpless to deal with such things as economic bubbles, worldwide epidemics, soaring college costs, stagnant wages and global warming. Faced with such large problems, our best option is to act collectively -- through government -- if we truly want to be the masters of our fate..."

Big government and all the regulations that it brings did not stop AIG and ENRON and Goldman Sachs from ripping off the citizens for trillions

Big government has perpetuated illegal wars and lies about them hourly.

"...building roads and highways, putting out fires, fighting disease, treating sewage, funding basic scientific research, providing medical care for the elderly, preventing crime, supplying clean water, feeding the poor, providing parks and recreational facilities, educating our children,..."

Mostly local concerns (yes of course excepting the interstates and welfare)

How is big government "helping" education right now? Busting unions.

Big government works at best half the time- the half that your party is in power.

The constitution is the answer. And yes it's living via amendments.

[G_j]

10. there is one thing that is far too big in the US government

the one thing the wingers don't, and won't mention,
It's bloated expense effects all our freedom and is one factor that puts most citizens in the role of indentured servants, because it's so freakin' expensive. Few even stop to think just how much oil the military uses, for example. We're paying for it. I guess the wingnuts don't mind paying trillions of dollars to the military through their taxes.

[mrcheerful]

11. Well that is true up to the point that if people leave the military or get wounded fighting

for the country or some non battle accident they don't want a dime spent on those people.

[Meldread]

12. I'll never understand the philosophy that says government = inherently good.

No, government is not inherently good. Government is inherently no different than a corporation with each eligible voter as a shareholder. Although, of course, a government does not need to be a democracy. Governments, like corporations, are amoral. They are neither good nor evil, but instead serve the whims of those that control them and the aims of those who fund them.

A government can commit acts of genocide against its citizens, it can imprison them indefinitely without trial for political differences, and it can tax its citizens into oblivion to fund a bloated military which oppresses its citizens and funds a wealthy elite. All of these things a government can do.

The ideal government is very different. It is neither big nor small - it is just right. It fills necessary roles as deemed by the citizens, and shrinks or grows as necessary to fill those roles. It is anti-bureaucratic; eliminating unnecessary waste - striving for both efficiency and effectiveness. It is transparent, allowing citizens to know what is going on so they can make informed decisions. It has some semblance of democracy, allowing the citizens to have a voice in how the government is run. It is staunchly against corruption of all sorts, and cracks down hard on those who are deemed corrupt. It provides the maximum amount of freedom possible to citizens within the bounds of what is reasonable to protect citizens from each other's actions.

That is the ideal form of government. Unfortunately, the ideal is impossible to achieve, and thus it is best simply to limit government because it is difficult to restrain it once it grows in power / authority short of some sort of revolution (either violent or non-violent). An example of the government constantly overstepping it's authority can be seen in the Obama administration where it is expanding the Bush spying programs to obtain more information on US citizens.

Government = Power. The most apt metaphor for power, to me at least, has always been the One Ring from the Lord of the Rings. Many would attempt to take the ring (government) with a desire to do good. Yet, few, if any could resist the temptations of power. In government you become surrounded by a bubble of group-thinking toadies who endlessly feed you nonsense about how great you are, and of the awesome job you are doing. An almost cult like structure forms, especially if there is criticism from the outside. You become defensive, the bubble tightens, and the reality that those outside the bubble experience becomes lost to you. Those that oppose your plans, your programs, which you believe are ultimately good, become troublemakers. Partisanship develops, minds narrow, rigidity sets in, and soon after what you are fighting for becomes lost. It becomes a game in which there are winners and losers, and you're determined to be the winner. In order for you to win there must be losers. At that point, justification for egregious actions becomes acceptable.

In the end, the old axiom remains true: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This is why there must be limits to government - literal restraints - and checks and balances. Over the centuries, these concepts did not develop by accident. They developed out of necessity. Government may be amoral, but the people who wield its power can be evil.

[Donnachaidh]

13. corporate-influenced big government IS the enemy

With the thousands of lobbyists in Washington right now, I'd say we have a BIG problem.

[L0oniX]

14. O yea ...I feel so much safer with over 800,000 government HLS asscarrots with security clearance.

Just like the fucking Keystone Cops.

[Ted_White]

15. Its not the size, but qaulity.