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Why Every Liberal Should Favor Small Government
Being a conservative who likes art, music, film, theater, new foods and cultural celebrations isn’t a stretch. That makes up the majority of conservatives I personally know. And while our preferences in those arenas may be different, we all share a near universal belief that government that is small is government that works best — streamlined, efficient, not trying to be an expert in areas that it is not. And, most importantly, a government that doesn’t think its interference makes things better.
But, for so many in liberal media and those moving narrative over facts, the conservative in America hates the arts (see: Meryl Streep), despises culture, and universally is an evil demagogue who hates brown people, wishes to live back in the ’50s, is desperate to eradicate all levels of government, and can’t stand the Commies.
Ok. It’s true about the Commies. They suck.
It has never been the desire of the political right to do away with government. Ever. Many are Federalists; a belief in a strong, central government. It was American patriot and musical inspirer Alexander Hamilton who wrote The Federalist Papers, in concert with John Jay, who became the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and James Madison, the fourth President of the United States.
These essays, published in newspapers across the colonies, pushed hard for the idea of a strong, central, focused government. That idea, the Constitution of the United States, kept government small, and its purpose focused. Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution lays out the duties of Congress. It’s a small, worthy, focused list.
Small and focused. That is the government conservatives want. And that is the government liberals should want. Because when government gets too big, everyone gets hurt. Everyone, eventually, loses.
In Roseville, Michigan, a man got a $128 ticket for warming up his car. Here are the details:
- It was cold out.
- His went to his car, in his own driveway, and turned it on to warm it up. He then went inside.
- When he came out 6 minutes later, he had a ticket on the car.
The city of Roseville says leaving your keys in your car will encourage people to steal your car. The ticket, according to them, is preventative; saving resources from having to track down thieves, and prevent insurance rates from going up.
The Chief of Police, James Berlin (middle name is East, I presume) has said that he encourages his officers to enforce this law. Chief Berlin:
It’s common sense. You can’t warn everybody on every law there is. Common sense says you don’t leave your car unattended.
I couldn’t agree more. You don’t leave your car unattended. It’s a bad idea. A worse idea? Government deciding to fine people for failing to use their common sense. When that happens, it’s no longer common sense. It’s government sense. Or, government approved thought.
Does anyone really want unknown others dictating to them what should be the accepted common decency, and then fining them if they don’t abide?
This isn’t a small thing. Yet, across the globe, there are larger, more horrific illustrations. In Venezuela, the military is selling food to the starving citizens. Here are the details:
- Nicholas Maduro is a socialist thug dictator.
- Venezuela sits on 95 billion barrels of oil. Oil they can’t monetize because the nation is run by socialists, and a thug dictator.
- The Venezuelan people eat pigeons because there is no food. Don’t even ask about toilet paper.
As Venezuela goes hungry, the military is getting rich off trafficking food. And the corruption starts at the top https://t.co/Tbr9EjXZsm
— Hannah Dreier (@hannahdreier) December 28, 2016
The military is in charge of food distribution at the direction of the government, and citizens must deal with them to find food that never makes it to the stores. As reported:
(G)rocer Jose Campos found when he ran out of pantry staples this year. In the middle of the night, he would travel to an illegal market run by the military to buy corn flour — at 100 times the government-set price.
“The military would be watching over whole bags of money,” Campos said. “They always had what I needed.”
Under former socialist thug dictator Hugo Chavez, the government created a “food ministry.” Then, “His socialist government nationalized and then neglected farms and factories, and domestic production dried up. When the price of oil collapsed in 2014, the government no longer could afford to import all the country needed.”
They have 95 billion barrels of oil under their feet but can’t grow their own food, nor can they afford to import it.
As retired General Cliver Alcala said in the same article:
Lately, food is a better business than drugs.
Government can’t solve this problem, because government caused this problem with constant price controls and price fixing and government intervention. Venezuela has raised the minimum wage five times in the past 12 months, an increase of 322% from where it was a year ago. And today you pay 100 times the price for food you used to get at the local bodega.
As Tim Worstall wrote at Forbes, “The army won’t solve this Venezuelan food problem, but abolishing price controls would.”
Translation: less government would let people afford food again, and stop eating pigeons.
These are only two examples of the power, importance and need for smaller, less intrusive government. These are lessons, from without and within our borders, of the corruptive nature of big government. Government shouldn’t impose their version of common sense on an electorate that, from person to person, might feel differently. And when government is in the food business, the business fails and no one eats. Amtrak and Michelle Obama prove that.
Shrinking the bloated US bureaucracy should be the chosen work of Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. It’s not about party; big government doesn’t work. The science is settled. Those who support big government aren’t just ideologues. They’re flat-earthers. And wrong.
Reposted from WIBC.com.
Published in General
They should if they believed what they say about loving people, wanting to help the poor etc. etc. but they don’t. Not everyone is worse off. The gate keepers get rich, get to whatever they want from whomever they want. Liberals want to control the gates and collect the tolls. Why isn’t that obvious?
I don’t think Democrat means what you think it means.
I’d like to think that people on both the left and right could be sold on the virtues of a limited federal government. If Uncle Sam had a much smaller footprint, then states would have more latitude to make government policies more satisfactory to the citizens of each individual state. As long as they are not violating the U.S. Constitution, let Texas be Texas and let California be California.
But upon further reflection, this argument doesn’t work. Federalism would allow Texas to be more Texan, with fewer regulations coming from Washington. But California wouldn’t really be more Californian than they already are, because they love all the regulations imposed on them. Since the federal government isn’t holding California back from making the state a tax and regulatory paradise (if you like that kind of thing), what would socialist Californians have to gain?
anecdotal ; As a Pan Am flight attendant in the early 80s, I often laid over in Caracas. Venezuela was a mess 35 years ago. Arriving Caracas, in the crew customs line, I asked the VIASA flight attendant why she was bringing in a duffel bag filled with paper products (t.p., paper toweling, etc.) and she replied “We cannot get these products in Venezuela”. It baffled me. As passengers, Venezuelans were perfectly lovely, and high energy, too. The country is a socialist tragedy.
I never once considered voting for Hillary. I equated a Clinton-democrat presidency with Venezuela.
Tony, thanks, your angst is palpable, you could have said this all in three or four paragraphs.
We have no liberals in America anymore. Those who used to be liberals are now libertarians. Those who claim to be liberals are commies. Pure and simple.
They’d get rid of the last conservatives who’d move to Texas. I’d say Wyoming, but some of the richest Californians already claim residence in Wy (and Nevada) because it has no income tax and few regulations. Californians are driving normal people out of Jackson Hole because real-estate is beyond reach. Fortunately they only live there a few weeks a year so they don’t affect politics or the culture that much.
Maybe CA wouldn’t gain as much toward the socialism want without federal socialism. The difference would be that their socialism wouldn’t impact me in Indiana. For example, I live in an area where there is absolutely no reason to conserve water. If falls from the sky and is collected in a reservoir at a rate that far exceeds our consumption. Yet, because CA has a water problem, the federal government forces me to use toilets that don’t work, and reduced flow faucets that I don’t want. If CA wants to regulate their faucets and toilets because of their unique problem, that is fine, but don’t force it on me.
The other thing is don’t force me to pay for their socialist policies.
It’s not for nuthin’ that every small town has a Chinese restaurant.