E.J. Dionne: Will We Keep Hating Government?

from truthdig:



Will We Keep Hating Government?

Posted on May 6, 2010
By E.J. Dionne


Ever heard the one about the guy who hated government until a deregulated Wall Street crashed, an oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, a coal mine collapsed, and some good police work stopped a terrorist attack?

Rarely has the news of the day run so counter to the spin on the news of the day. It’s hard to argue that the difficulties we confront were caused by an excessively powerful “big” government. Rather, most of them arose from the government’s failure to do its job in the first place.

The central tasks of democratic government, after all, typically involve standing up for the many against the few, the less powerful against the more powerful. Government is supposed to make sure that corporations are properly supervised when they turn public resources (the environment in the Gulf of Mexico, for example) into private gain. It is charged with protecting those with weaker bargaining positions (coal miners, for example) against the harm that those in stronger bargaining positions might inflict.

Its duty is to keep the private economy running smoothly by preventing fraud, shady dealing and forms of self-interested behavior that threaten the entire system. And yes, it’s supposed to keep us safe from physical harm, as it did in New York City.

Especially in the economic sphere, government in recent years failed to carry out too many of these basic functions. That explains why this moment’s anti-government feeling reflects two entirely different strains of thinking. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/will_we_keep_hating_government_20100506/

Will habeus corpus be restored, and the Bill of Rights and and the Constitution?

Will illegal wars end, and war crimes be prosecuted, and surveillance be stopped?

Will the race to the bottom be reversed, will the buck stop with the average citizen and not the oligarch?

This government asks us to die quietly and neatly on command, to give up all hopes for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. Of course we are going to hate it. We are going to do more--we are going to change it, one way or the other. If they won't permit free and fair elections, if the people we elect prove to be the tools of oppression and injustice, if they ignore petition and block free assembly, if the press is subverted, then we will have to find another way. We the People are not going to eat shit and die, just because the Corporations want it that way, and the Oligarchs.

especially by the government

we'll become Greece, without the protests

Very general, but some truth to it too.

Not the public good. Those with much, get much more. Those with little or none stay stagnant. The government has and will continue to aid the less fortunate. Only the stupid poor and misinformed (and there are many) athink that the government (even the central government) is a "bad thing"