“Big Government” Demonization and Hypocrisy

I recently overheard a conversation among some guys. The one doing all the talking apparently considered himself middle of the road. He bemoaned the fact that our government consists of extremists on both the left and the right. He said that government is too big, that it ought to just step out of the way and let the private sector handle things, and if it did that we’d be just fine.

I thought about that conversation. It’s important to understand that those who play the “big government” card, or those who are taken in by it, mean by “big government” a government tries to help people. But that is supposed to be what government is all about.

Our revolutionary generation – those who founded our country on July 4th, 1776, by declaring independence from Great Britain – clearly stated this in the Declaration that they wrote to explain their reasons for declaring independence. After declaring the natural rights that should accrue to all human beings, they stated “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” That sentence is of immense importance because without a government to secure our rights, those rights are nothing but words on a piece of paper. Unless and until people can unite to form a government to protect themselves, there will always be those who will dominate (or tyrannize) other people in their own interests. There will always (or at least for the foreseeable future) be those who will lie, cheat, steal, brutalize and kill in the pursuit of their own greedy interests if nothing is there to stop them. The purpose of government is to prevent that from happening by forming a bond among peace loving, justice seeking people with consciences, to stop those who would otherwise cheat, steal from and kill them to get what they want. That’s what police are supposed to be for. That is what government regulatory agencies are supposed to be for.

This principle is stated again in the Constitution that was written to make the principles of our Declaration into reality. They are stated in the 1st paragraph of our Constitution, which provides the reasons for its existence and the establishment of our government:


So people who rail against “big government” by attacking its attempts to ensure that its citizens have decent medical care, that its young people have the opportunity for a decent education, or that its elderly have an opportunity for a comfortable retirement, are attacking the very foundations upon which our country was created. It is utterly stupid to think of government as something inherently bad, incompetent, or useless. A government has the potential to be all those things, and worse. It is up to the citizens of a country to see that that doesn’t happen, by developing the ability to think intelligently about what they hear, and respond with intelligent action.


What does it mean for a government to be too “big”

A government is too big when the vast majority of its citizens lose control of it. It is too big when it is taken over by extremists whose interests lie not in serving the people whom they are supposed to represent, but in enriching and aggrandizing themselves. It is too big when the people that government is supposed stop from dominating other people instead help the dominators in their efforts to dominate. How can we tell when we have a government like this? Here are some clues:

A government is probably out of control when it spends almost as much money on its military as all the rest of the nations of the earth combined; when it has hundreds of military bases scattered all over the world; when it ignores the international laws that were created to maintain peace, and which it once played a leading role in creating, and; when it goes to war against other nations for no good reason, and then there is no effort to punish its leaders for doing that.

A government is probably out of control when it deals with economic crises by handing over trillions of dollars to powerful corporations while doing relatively little to help the vast majority of its citizens, especially its most vulnerable citizens; and when, as a result of such government policies, the wealth gap expands to its greatest heights ever, so that one third of its wealth is held by 1% of households while the bottom 80% owns less than half of what those fortunate 1% own.

A government is probably out of control when it incarcerates a much higher percent of its citizens than any other nation in the world; when imprisonment for victimless crimes is a prominent feature of its criminal justice system; when it goes to great lengths to ensure that people who buy, sell, or use a drug for medicinal purposes are punished for doing so, and; when it hands over much of its prison system to private for-profit interests.

A government is probably out of control when it hands over the running of elections to private for-profit interests; and when those interests provide machines that count our votes in ways that are impossible to verify.

A government is probably out of control when it makes many of its most important decisions in secret, and convinces its people that it does so in their best interests.

A government is probably out of control when it grants licenses to corporations to monopolize our communications media to such an extent that the vast majority of “news” that its citizens hear is controlled and censored by a small number of very wealthy individuals; and when that monopolization is so great that its citizens develop a very distorted picture of the world and their country.

A government is probably out of control when, in the interests of “freedom” and “small government” it allows its most wealthy and powerful corporations to pollute our air, water and soil with impunity, and to write our laws in their interest.


The “big government” hoax

But the term “big government” has come to mean none of those things in our country. Instead it has come to mean a government that tries to do exactly those things for which government is needed, and for which our nation was created – help ordinary people.

Those who perpetrate this hoax do so for the purpose increasing the wealth gap still further and of distracting peoples’ attention from the real problems that are destroying our country. The spending of resources and money to help ordinary people impedes the efforts of those who have the most of these things from widening the wealth gap still further.

If people are convinced to be concerned that “big government” helps its most vulnerable citizens too much, then maybe they won’t notice all the wealth and power being accumulated by those who already have the most of it. Playing upon peoples’ racial fears and fears of immigrants has the potential to turn the vast majority of citizens against each other, and turns their attention away from the real reasons why the modest wealth they built up over decades of hard work are now slipping away from them. If “big government” has come to mean a government that tries to ensure that its most vulnerable citizens are able to obtain health care and educate their children, then that term probably won’t be applied to a government that spends vast sums of money on useless military endeavors, incarcerates its citizens in record numbers, and oversees a massive transfer of wealth to the most wealthy among us.


Leftists and the moving center

I believe that a definition of “left” that I recently came across makes many of these points as well as any – and it brings us back to the conversation I mentioned at the beginning of this post. That definition defined “left” as:


It’s interesting that the word “radical” is used here to describe someone who attempts to “achieve equality, freedom, and well-being of the common citizens”. That is essentially the purpose that our Founding Fathers gave for founding our nation. “Radical” is a word of many meanings, but one which mostly has negative connotations, such as in this definition of “radical” – which uses words such as “extreme”, “drastic”, and “anarchistic” to define it.

In other words, it has become “radical” (i.e. drastic and extreme) in our country to attempt to achieve equality, freedom, and well-being of our common fellow citizens. Such efforts denote “big government”, or “socialism”. People who care about and work for such things are considered far left, radical, extreme, partisan, or socialistic. So-called “centrists” reject this kind of “extreme” thought and behavior, or at best they think we ought to “compromise” with those who try to destroy those institutions – Social Security, Medicare, universal public education – that created the largest and most prosperous middle class we ever had and provided safety nets for our most vulnerable citizens. I’ll go back to what one of our greatest presidents said about this long before "liberal" became a term of abuse in our country:


President John F. Kennedy

The democrats have done very little to challenge the idea that Republicans are for small government. How the hell can imperialists be in favor of small government? They don't want small government they want a very powerful government that exists primarily to protect corporate interests and provides less services for ordinary citizens.

By constantly complaining about "Big Government" they hope we won't notice that they have made our government huge in exactly the ways that benefit them, at the expense of everyone else. And with the help of their corporate controlled media, they have been successful in fooling the great majority of Americans on that score. So sad. So pathetic.

Always a treat!

some of the demonization probably stems from the capitalists' hatred and fear of communism, specifically what the Bolsheviks did to the effete Russian aristocracy and and their private property, Stalin's terror, centralization, etc. This was likely part of the foundation for (fanatical anti-communist) Reagan's demonization of "big government" along with hatred of the hugely successful anti-oligarchical New Deal programs.

Then there was the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action, EEOC, and other legislation that were indeed efforts to help people but that help often came at the expense of white male/oligarchical/Republican privilege (making it evil!).

Great post, TFC. K/R

But it is also true that Communism has been used as a convenient excuse, especially since the onset of the Cold War but even before that, to stamp out any movement that threatens to cut into the profits of wealthy interests. The vast majority of our foreign interventions during the Cold War were against nations that posed no threat to us, even though some of them had partially Communist or socialist governments. Yet we always used Communism as our excuse.

Mad Hatters and Queens of Hearts and Cheshire Cats are elected.

So many big lies around today.

Being ruled by Multinational Corporations is being governed by interests that don't care about our national interest beyond its status as a source of increased wealth for their private holdings.

The anti big government folks enlarge the government quite a bit--

>> the huge apparatus of the TSA

>> establishing rules that require control of women's reproductive rights

>> establishing emergency financial managers that are appointed to overrule elected officials and privatize government services to profit friends of the governors

>> wanting to force schools to institute prayer according to the specifications of one set of the nation's hundreds of religions

>> instituting laws that damage public safety in order to crush attempts of its workers to unionize

>> instituting laws against disclosure of what toxic chemicals are used to force "clean natural gas" from shale

>> etc etc.

One could write a book about all the etceteras -- the ways that they enlarge government to support their own interests at the expense of 99% of our citizens.

When will the majority of the American people catch on to their tricks?

"When will the majority of the American people catch on to their tricks?"

The whole world outside the US is wondering what it will take to awaken these sleepy heads from their trance.
Obama repeated the hypnotic mantra twice in his TV speech last Monday, calling America the "Greatest Nation on Earth", while at the same time urging a compromise with the con artists who are turning the US into a police state on the brink of financial collapse.

I fear it will take the ongoing, and ever more rapidly proceeding demolition of the social safety net for sufficient numbers of Americans to finally wake up.

Big Lie: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Would that a Democratic leader of note with truck nuts on board had replied: "In the United States, the Government is 'We the People.' How we apply our resources, talents, and time may be a problem. But our form of government is not the problem."

Because the Big Lie was allowed to fester and spread, unchecked by the antiseptic of truth, we now live in an era where the liars are allowed to manufacture the reality.

"That's not the way the world really works anymore.
We're an empire now, and when we act, we
create our own reality."

-- Bush II Senior Advisor Karl Rove, aka "Turd Blossom"

I have a couple of Friends that buy into the Government is too big, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme etc types. A couple of observation I have noticed about them. These idea are fundamental paradigm's to them. They fundamentally believe the paradigm and see every thing relative to it. The saying "where the mind goes energy flow" also come to mind. No discussion, no fact, nothing will sway them against the paradigm. If I feel I have gotten to them one day, they have dismissed it by the next day. They buy into the jargon of the right wing automatically as they both repeat all the same sayings. They both buy into the idea that the rich are rich because they are smart and deserve what they have and the stupid are poor because they are stupid and deserve what they got but don't use those exact words. Some more of the bought into statements are: The Government does everything ineffective and natural market pressures does everything perfect. Socialism is a terrible thing that history shows "does not work" and that is the only thing that Liberals want. Social Security and Medicare are socialist Ponsi schemes. Taxes are essentially stealing someone else's money and there is no discussion of fairness or shared burden (the status quo is heavily defended)and fundamentally zero taxes and zero government are the end goal but they want a strong military. Me as a liberal, I believe that all laws affect the distribution of wealth and I want laws that are fair to society as a whole and not ones that benefit a few. Socialism is a good thing not a bad one and is important for a healthy society. I would double the payment of Social Security now, link it to real inflation and fund it appropriately. If we were committed if would be easy to do and what a better way to help the rapidly growing senior population, many of whom have no extra money, and create a vibrant economy at the same time. More another time.
-Airplane

I think the key part is this:

"All laws affect the distribution of wealth and I want laws that are fair to society as a whole and not ones that benefit a few."