SMALLER GOVERNMENT- IN YOUR DREAMS!

Anybody whose mantra is "smaller government" is living in the past, when our country was smaller in population, and simpler in demands. Do you really want to go back to everyone having his own well, (no municipal water supply, or sewage collection), his own fireplace, make his own candles, (no nationwide power grid) and growing his own food, because there are no essential cross country farm to market roads? Do you want to give up all our highways, and trains, and planes that fly, and all the government actions that made these things possible, that keep them working with maximum safety? Do you want to go back to the danger of eating uninspected food, before the USDA and FDA went to work to save us? For years our government kept our mail circulating through the worst of conditions. There is nothing in your daily life that doesn’t depend on a functioning government, and the bigger our nation grows, and the more complicated our lives become, the more bureaus, and departments, and regulations we are going to need to keep everything working properly. The more we move about this great big country, whether it is moving merchandise or ourselves, whether for business or pleasure, the more we need nationwide laws, that allow us this freedom of movement. How would we like it, if we had to present a passport as we crossed each state border? How would we like it, if each state regulated how much of its coal or oil or water was allowed to leave its borders, and which state or states could share its resources?

We are one nation, for heaven’s sake, and if we attempt to Balkanize the United States of America by drawing lines, and more lines the UNITED states can’t cross, we will become as trivial as all the separate states of Germany or Italy would be today, if they didn’t act as a unified whole. Not only did all these separate states get together to make a unified and more powerful whole, but all of Europe is working hard to keep the European Union alive, a Herculean effort, but probably the best war deterrent there could be.

Let’s not let our powerful, most desirable country in the world fall apart because we are afraid of government, because we want to turn clocks back to a harsher time, because we believe the lies and hatreds that are being spewed by those who like to blame what ever problems they are having on anybody but themselves, and the government is often a good target. For a country as large and complex as we, and the world, has become, we need more laws and regulations, not fewer. We need to keep changing the laws, as situations change, and we need to be creative in making new ones, but every time one of our legislators refuses to do his duty of legislating, we take steps backwards. Every person that attempts to de-legitimize our government, is leading you down the thorny path to chaos and anarchy. Every politician who is afraid to legislate needs another day job. We don’t pay them to sit and do nothing, and we certainly should never vote into office someone whose program is “smaller government.”  That’s just a catch phrase that means to do nothing. It doesn’t work in the world we live in now, only in our dreams, imperfectly remembered, of an imperfect past.