Ask the average person about their personal experiences with government and you will get a litany of complaints about red tape, a confusing bureaucracy, disinterested employees and their answer will almost always include a general dissatisfaction with their experience. Most people's direct contact with government is usually at the local level - be it a complaint about a pothole (that never seems to get fixed) or paying the fine on a traffic ticket. Perhaps the most stereotypical experience we associate with government is the legendary DMV/DOL gauntlet. For most of us that are veterans, we usually have a war story or two about the paperwork screw-ups that only a governmental agency like the Department of Defense and its associated armed service components can deliver.
So that begs the question - Why do we expect a law passed by the government to fix anything and why are we so eager to give any government entity - especially the federal one - more and more responsibility (read power) over our lives and livelihoods?
Any time there is a some kind of crisis, perceived or real, politicians (of every stripe), special interest groups and even ordinary citizens (in many cases) feel the need to give the government more and more authority to regulate whatever it is that either caused the problem or was affected by it?
Certainly, government has a role in ordering society to a degree. We need a certain amount of laws to keep those who would purposely cause harm or damage in check. We all understand that no law will completely stop anyone bent upon doing something that will cause harm or damage. We have laws against murder, robbery, violence and speeding on the freeway. There is an old truism that says that a locked door only keeps an honest man out. We know that if someone wants to get in that door without permission, the lock is only an obstacle, not a guarantee. That is why we have the laws, the police and ultimately the jails to catch and punish people for breaking the rules.
After a/an [insert crisis/disaster/accident] happens, there is almost always a hue and cry by almost everyone for congress to do something. If you think about it, you are demanding that a group of men and women whose only real experience is in winning an elections, to come up with a simple solution to a problem that most probably intimidates trained experts, and you want that solution yesterday. I'm not talking specifically about an emergency response. We do expect our political leadership to act and to lead, but a solution to the original crisis shouldn't normally be instantaneous by partisan hacks whose main interest is feathering his re-election nest. I'm not saying that some politicians aren't knowledgeable about certain issues, but most are clueless. we all know that staffers handle the day to day research and feed s what they know to their boss who may or may not understand even the simplest of concepts concerning the issue. Does anyone really think Maxine Waters knows anything about oil other than it's something someone puts someplace in her car? - and yet on several occasions, she's called for the nationalization of the oil industry.
I'm not specifically talking about oil. What about your health care? What about the financial crisis? As the President's Chief of Staff said: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”
In political speak, that means an opportunity to impose some more control on "we, the people." Some of the worst laws on the books are the result of the government trying to fix something.
As we head into this Independence day, ask yourself - Just how independent are you these days? If you can't live your life without demanding the government take some kind of action by passing a law - how free are you?
VW
