First Posted on 03-Nov-2014
Somebody knows. I heard this first on NPR. It was a political science professor illustrating why he sought smaller, more effective government. I’d give credit but I forget who it was I heard. His illustration:
So, you could have small and capable (my favorite), small and incapable, large and capable, large and incapable. Small and incapable might as well not exist. Large and capable becomes oppressive and annoying. Large and incapable is worse because it’s expensive and often corrupt and for all the effort, does little good. That leaves my favorite, small and capable.
This election, our choice is between a philosophy that government can do it better and thus, should be larger, and a somewhat false opposite, the private sector can do it better, and thus government should be smaller. Both are wrong. Unregulated capitalism gets out of control. An unconstrained government is also bad. Private Industry and Government need each other.
What we have now is an Executive Branch uninterested in any sort of real democratic governance and enough of a vocal voting block that the president can claim a mandate to behave in this way. The only opinion that matters is that of the White House. Obama has been very public about saying that if Congress doesn’t give him what he wants he’ll use the power of his office to get things done. This gets far too close to a functional dictatorship and a titular democracy. The numerous times he’s acted only enough to appear to care, to appear to do something when nothing really gets done. Bananna Republic anybody?
The Republicans are about damned useless. They like big government just as much as the Democrats. I’ve been amused the last couple of decades because it seems like the party claiming to like small government is just as profligate with our tax dollars as the Democrats. They like guns rather than schoolbooks or butter. I love the hope that the Tea Party gave us. Two days isn’t enough time to finish the revolution they started. In the meantime, we need a Republican-controlled Senate so we can muzzle Harry Reid and get in Obama’s face. Then, we’ve got two years to work on actually reducing the size of government and putting more capital into private hands through lower capital gains taxes and a flat(er) Income Tax. Then we’ll see.