by Kerry Thomas
May 29, 2008
During a recent FNC television report from Iraq, the reporter doing the story commented that the Iraqi people don’t yet trust their government.
Just goes to show you how smart the Iraqis are.
There’s an old joke in America about “I’m from the
government and I’m here to help you.”
How many times have our professional politicians broken the promises they
made during a campaign? More times than
they’ve kept them, I’ll wager.
The American Revolution was predicated on a distrust of our
English rulers. Our Constitution was
designed to limit the size and scope of our government. Those powers not specifically granted to our
federal government were to be reserved to the States, or to the People thereof, according to the 10th
Amendment of our Constitution.
Iraqis don’t yet trust their government. Sounds like they’ve already learned a lot
from us Americans. It’s a lesson many
Republicans have forgotten, a lesson most Democrats never learned.
Our professional class of career politicians look at most of
us poor peons here in Middle America as little more than serfs to be taxed and
cared for. And cared for and cared for
and cared for. The repetitive
redundancy of our government services is staggering. Politician after politician go around promising to fix whatever
problems are ailing us. What they never
realize is that most of our “problems” stem from the bureaucracy of an
ineffective government.
Distrust of government is a good thing. A healthy dose of skepticism should greet
every new proposal put forth by any government official. Their new programs, and most of the old ones,
too, are based on government projections of what future generations will
do. They seldom use dynamic modeling,
relying instead on static projections, where everything is assumed to remain
constant.
Nothing ever stays the same. Government services are subject to the same laws of supply and
demand as everything else. When you
reduce the cost of something, you increase the demand for that thing, be it a
product or a service. Free government
services encourage a stronger demand for those services. That’s how a $100 billion “free” government
program suddenly costs taxpayers $300 billion (or more).
The promise of America has always been to give the
individual the Freedom to pursue their own path to success in life, wherever
that path takes them on their life’s journey.
In Socialist/Communist societies, the government determines your path in
life, usually with little or no individual freedom. If you’re unhappy with your lot in life, too bad.
The promise of America, the Freedom we enjoy as Americans, allows
you and everyone else to change their lot in life if they choose to do so. You don’t have to go to the government to
beg for a change. You just do it.
Americans sometimes forget, government employees and
officials work for us. We’re the
bosses. There’s a reason we call them
public servants. Think about it this
way. When you’re electing someone to a
public office, you’re hiring them to manage your country. Campaigns are, in essence, pre-hiring
auditions and interviews. Are the
candidates answering the questions you’d have for a new employee? How truthful, how honest, how trustworthy,
how competent are these prospective employees?
Would you hire this candidate to manage your country?
George Washington warned us against allowing a professional
political class to emerge. We’ve all
but forgotten that sage advice, allowing the professional politicians not only
to emerge, but to flourish. We’ve
entrusted the management of America to them, and look at the results.
Iraqis don’t yet trust their government. Sounds like good advice to me.