Why Elect People Whose Goal It Is To Eviscerate Government?

Ironically, the somewhat conservative NY Time columnist David Brooks makes this point in a recent article.  It is something I've wondered about for years.  I mean I guess if you hate government, then it makes sense to elect people who also hate government and want to make it small enough to drown in the bathtub.  But in some ways it is a beautiful virtual cycle for the right again.  Elect people who hate government, they do a crappy job running the government because they hate it. Then people who already hate it get to hate it more because it is not working!

The other point Brooks makes is about the central story the right has been telling for years: 
Encroachment Story: the core problem of American life is that voracious government has been steadily encroaching upon individuals and local communities. The core American conflict, in this view, is between Big Government and Personal Freedom.
While losing the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, the flaws of this mentality have become apparent. First, if opposing government is your primary objective, it’s hard to have a positive governing program. 
He makes my point about electing people who hate government on principle, but does it kind of lamely.  But I want to pay attention to the concept of "encroachment" being government encroaching on personal freedom.  I can see how that may be perceived by someone who feels they have been restricted in some way by government regulation.  But it really is a matter of perspective.  As I described in another post, much of government regulation is about creating a level playing field.  People get pissed off when some government regulation doesn't allow them to do what they want, but again, most of the time, there is some logic involved in a regulation that involves giving everyone a fair shot, or protecting the public from harm.  Yes, pollution regulations "encroach" on a business ability to do whatever the hell they want, but we experienced what industry does when there are no regulations in the 1960's and '70s, when we had choking smog and rivers on fire.  Of course not all regulations are reasonable, and of course there is unnecessary red tape.  But people like to incessantly tell stories of government not working, as if that proves that the entire government doesn't work or that the rules and regs don't have a reason. The exception does not prove the rule.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An addition to the sadness

 2/11/2023: Well, as expected, I have not been back to this blog much since my last post a couple of months ago. Alisa's progression has progressed unfortunately, and her speech is really suffering. This is part of the brutality of #ALS - it just keeps taking things away from you. As one of our friends said, we have to keep "riding the waves of loss." Quite accurate, but some are worse than others. For my dear Lis, speaking is something she was good at, and always had lots of nice things to say to people, so I can't imagine how difficult it is to have her preferred form of expression curtailed so drastically, especially in the devastating drip, drip, drip fashion that it happens in #ALS. We are just over a year in from diagnosis (1/13/22), which is both hard to believe, and depressing, especially looking back at how she was a year ago, speaking reasonably well, walking well, etc. A picture came up on my phone of her and Bella up on Mt Toby right about a year ago, with
Read more

A Simple Twist of Fate

Although I am not much of a Dylan fan - I could never get past his mediocre voice - my partner Alisa is, and this is one of her favorite songs. And it applies brutally to what has happened to her, which is that she was formally diagnosed with #ALS in January 2022, after a series of doctor visits. So this blog is going to turn into a a bit of an #ALS journal for a while, although not necessarily exclusively. We have a CaringBridge site set up so I'll not duplicate much of that. One thing that didn't make it on the CB site was my initial email to family and friends, which I do want to reproduce here as a record of how things went early on. I'm going to go back a little bit for those who haven't been part of the process early on. We noticed some speech and swallowing difficulties in the late spring early summer last year. We didn't think too much about it (but should have of course), thinking it was due to some sores in her mouth (as opposed to the cause of those sore
Read more

Does Religion Have A Corner On Moral Values?

Reading this editorial in the NY Times, I was reminded of an idea that occurred to me sometime ago: why do moral values = religion? It is of course my contention that they don't, which is well illustrated in the article, but perhaps even more so by the pedophilia in the Catholic church and the other sex/money scandals involving prominent evangelists. But after the last election, which was supposedly decided by "values voters," the media in general equated them with religious people. Personally, some of the most moral people I know have nothing to do with religion. They simply care about other people, animals and the earth, and act accordingly. Religious people generally favor "traditional" values, which is all well and good as long as profession of those values is not simply a cover for behavior in direct contradiction of those values.
Read more