The Case for Limited Government
(and that includes a limited Military)
Why is government inefficient? The best answer; because it’s the government! Government is as close as you will get to a legal monopoly. Why are monopolies bad? Because they eliminate competition, which diminishes productivity and kills innovation, both of which are the lifeblood of any culture—including job creation and scientific research. This is just as true of military spending as it is of entitlements. It’s also why high taxes reinforce bad government and kill job growth.
In the world of politics, politicians are seldom held accountable for their failed policies. When they do fail, which is more often than not, they can just blame the other party. By contrast, in the world of business, if you aren't successful pretty quickly, you'll just as quickly go out of business, which is why 80% of businesses fail in the first year, 90% in the second. It's a simple and efficient way of separating the wheat from the chaff. In politics, however, bad ideas can be sustained by a faithful electorate that is more interested in supporting their guy than solving problems; meaning, that if politicians don’t have to be accountable, they probably won’t be.
Where it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that good ideas take time to implement, bad ideas, oftentimes, will be sustained for years and even decades. With politicians heaping one more failed idea on top of another, taxpayers are left footing the bill like a deep-pocketed sugar daddy keeping a mistress.
Progressives frequently respond by stating that a 90% failure rate is an example of the wasteful tendencies of the free market—implying that politicians, most of whom have no experience in the various areas of commerce that they oversee, would somehow be more successful. In other words, the ignorance and good intentions of politicians, acting on behalf of an even more ignorant and well-intended public, should be the basis for economic prosperity and that government, which is already the most powerful institution on earth, should be given even more power and control over people’s lives and decisions. Not the people who've invested their own, hard-earned money, operating within their own, very specific fields of expertise, but government bureaucrats serving as universal overseers. This is the basis for Marxist theory and still is the foundation of a good deal of leftist thinking, whether they know it or not. The past hundred years stands as a testament to the complete failure of this kind of reasoning, or maybe I should say the lack thereof.
If the idea of limited government is applicable to local, state and federal government, it just as reasonably applies to the military. In fact, if government is the greatest threat to individual freedom, it is the military and varying forms of police power that make this possible. This point should be beyond debate, but seldom ever is.
Justifications for expansive use and growth of military power have run the gamut from the notion of "Manifest Destiny" in the nineteenth century to "If we don't attack first and ask questions later, we'll end up living under Soviet rule or Sharia Law" today. The fact that these threats may be very real doesn't mean that a blank check to the corporations that feed at the government trough by means of the military-industrial complex is the solution.
A broke America is a vulnerable America. And, that is far more likely to happen as the result of vast military expenditures than it is because of some welfare queen talking on her free Obama-phone and eating Filet Mignon on her overly generous food stamp allowance. No one should have to tell conservatives that both ideas are bad--and for all the same reasons. Government is inefficient because it has monopoly power. It can confer on favored sons and daughters benevolent outpourings of taxpayer dollars in exchange for votes.
In the world of politics, politicians are seldom held accountable for their failed policies. When they do fail, which is more often than not, they can just blame the other party. By contrast, in the world of business, if you aren't successful pretty quickly, you'll just as quickly go out of business, which is why 80% of businesses fail in the first year, 90% in the second. It's a simple and efficient way of separating the wheat from the chaff. In politics, however, bad ideas can be sustained by a faithful electorate that is more interested in supporting their guy than solving problems; meaning, that if politicians don’t have to be accountable, they probably won’t be.
Where it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that good ideas take time to implement, bad ideas, oftentimes, will be sustained for years and even decades. With politicians heaping one more failed idea on top of another, taxpayers are left footing the bill like a deep-pocketed sugar daddy keeping a mistress.
Progressives frequently respond by stating that a 90% failure rate is an example of the wasteful tendencies of the free market—implying that politicians, most of whom have no experience in the various areas of commerce that they oversee, would somehow be more successful. In other words, the ignorance and good intentions of politicians, acting on behalf of an even more ignorant and well-intended public, should be the basis for economic prosperity and that government, which is already the most powerful institution on earth, should be given even more power and control over people’s lives and decisions. Not the people who've invested their own, hard-earned money, operating within their own, very specific fields of expertise, but government bureaucrats serving as universal overseers. This is the basis for Marxist theory and still is the foundation of a good deal of leftist thinking, whether they know it or not. The past hundred years stands as a testament to the complete failure of this kind of reasoning, or maybe I should say the lack thereof.
If the idea of limited government is applicable to local, state and federal government, it just as reasonably applies to the military. In fact, if government is the greatest threat to individual freedom, it is the military and varying forms of police power that make this possible. This point should be beyond debate, but seldom ever is.
Justifications for expansive use and growth of military power have run the gamut from the notion of "Manifest Destiny" in the nineteenth century to "If we don't attack first and ask questions later, we'll end up living under Soviet rule or Sharia Law" today. The fact that these threats may be very real doesn't mean that a blank check to the corporations that feed at the government trough by means of the military-industrial complex is the solution.
A broke America is a vulnerable America. And, that is far more likely to happen as the result of vast military expenditures than it is because of some welfare queen talking on her free Obama-phone and eating Filet Mignon on her overly generous food stamp allowance. No one should have to tell conservatives that both ideas are bad--and for all the same reasons. Government is inefficient because it has monopoly power. It can confer on favored sons and daughters benevolent outpourings of taxpayer dollars in exchange for votes.
For the deeply religious among us, of which I am one, the idea of inalienable rights being God given and not man given, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, is fundamental to human freedom and was never intended to establish a form of theocratic rule. If government is the source of our freedoms, then government can just as easily take them away. By placing God at the center of this statement, Thomas Jefferson wisely placed our freedoms beyond the reach of earthly tyrants and would be kings. He was, however, a deist who never intended to establish a particular religion, hence the use of the word “creator” instead of Jesus, Yahweh, Buddha or Zeus.
It was enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Paine who were the principal architects of the conception of “Natural Law” that was adopted by Jefferson. This meant that man was endowed with specific traits as the result of the various forces that governed both human nature and the natural world from which man arose. Freedom was a state of being, as natural to man as the need for food and water.
Thomas Jefferson was not a fundamentalist Christian, he was a deist firmly rooted in the Greek-Epicurean tradition. He was a Christian in terms of his moral beliefs, having written his own version of the Gospels, minus the miracles. He found in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth the highest standard of moral thought, including radical notions regarding human nature, individual freedom and a vision of personal morality which was not dependent on legislated moral codes, covenants or contracts. You could rightfully make the case that it was Plato and the Greeks and Jesus and the Jews that made Locke, Hobbes, Paine, Jefferson and the American nation possible.
Inherent in the idea of inalienable rights is the right to the fruit of your labor. The government was never intended to be the source of our wealth and well-being—and as such, has no right to take them away through legislative sleight of hand in the form of excessive taxes or punitive actions.
If you don’t hold these truths to be self-evident, take it up with Thomas Jefferson. And please, don’t tell me about the history of slavery, labor unions or women’s rights. Not because I don’t think those things are important, but because I can reasonably assume that the person asking the question has never actually studied the history of global slavery or women’s rights beyond the very narrow confines of fairly recent American and European history. If they had, they would know that freedom and democracy aren't the problem…..they’re the solution!
Mark Magula
It was enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Paine who were the principal architects of the conception of “Natural Law” that was adopted by Jefferson. This meant that man was endowed with specific traits as the result of the various forces that governed both human nature and the natural world from which man arose. Freedom was a state of being, as natural to man as the need for food and water.
Thomas Jefferson was not a fundamentalist Christian, he was a deist firmly rooted in the Greek-Epicurean tradition. He was a Christian in terms of his moral beliefs, having written his own version of the Gospels, minus the miracles. He found in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth the highest standard of moral thought, including radical notions regarding human nature, individual freedom and a vision of personal morality which was not dependent on legislated moral codes, covenants or contracts. You could rightfully make the case that it was Plato and the Greeks and Jesus and the Jews that made Locke, Hobbes, Paine, Jefferson and the American nation possible.
Inherent in the idea of inalienable rights is the right to the fruit of your labor. The government was never intended to be the source of our wealth and well-being—and as such, has no right to take them away through legislative sleight of hand in the form of excessive taxes or punitive actions.
If you don’t hold these truths to be self-evident, take it up with Thomas Jefferson. And please, don’t tell me about the history of slavery, labor unions or women’s rights. Not because I don’t think those things are important, but because I can reasonably assume that the person asking the question has never actually studied the history of global slavery or women’s rights beyond the very narrow confines of fairly recent American and European history. If they had, they would know that freedom and democracy aren't the problem…..they’re the solution!
Mark Magula
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