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Does Opposing Some Government Mean Opposing All Government
This is a reworking of an earlier post but I thought it would be fun weekend conversation.
Often when we get a debate between the big government/small government positions I see someone who supports the big government side come up with “well you oppose big government so you must refuse taking benefit X”.
I must confess that I’ve never seen the logic to that position.
I’m a relative moderate, or so I like to think, but I do think government can get too big. That does not mean that I oppose all government. I think it clearly has a role in many areas of life including building standards, public safety and the like. At the same time I think there are areas where the government regulation goes too far (such as when some cities try to ban certain types of food because they think it’s bad for you).
But I don’t see how that is a problem, I support some government but not all government. Indeed if the logic of some is ‘if you oppose my government program you must oppose all of them’ then would not the logical extension of that view be ‘if you support your government program you must support all government programs’.
Indeed the logical inference could be that nations like North Korea are amoung the best governed because the government there controls all apsects of life. I do not, of course apply this logic to anyone that I know or that participates at TMV. But at the same time you need to accept that you can oppose one government program while supporting another.
I also find it a bit bemusing that some of the same people who are making this argument are ones who have steadfastly opposed most roles carried out by the military and yet it is the Japanese and US military that is going in now to provide quake relief. If you apply the logic above then would not opposing the use of the military in program A mean you have to oppose using them now ? (Again I do not make that argument nor do I apply it to anyone unless they chime in here saying yes).
But I think the point is made.
However, as always, I welcome opposing views.
32 Responses to “Does Opposing Some Government Mean Opposing All Government”
Mighty organizations from little acorns grow.
Most organizations, governments, businesses, clubs, religions, military, anything with more than one person and a stated purpose, are prone to grow larger than need be so they and their leaders/bureaucrats can justify their existence.
(Name one that doesn’t.)
If certain things need to be “made up” to justify growth, that is OK, because the organization is supreme and needed to support the thing itself. We only need to observe our animal ancestors as they seek to expand and control their turf (yes, chimps will kill other chimps).
You can’t stop this natural tendency, but you can try yo control it so it doesn’t hurt the rest of us (and our little kingdoms), the EPA is accused of over regulating, while the SEC would love to regulate more, but is ineffective for various reasons.
See, even here there is too much drivel when there is no limiting factor. I’m shutting up now.
Patrick, in my view, you are defining the “moderate thought process”.
Look at issues both independently and with an eye on how they fit in the greater whole. Try to look at issues from differing points of view. Recognize and refute dogma. And understand that any good idea, taken to the extreme, can quickly become a terrible idea.
Thanks Barky, I appreciate the compliment.
Patrick,
I agree with your argument but I’ll go a step further and say that even opposing a particular government function does not mean refusing any benefit derived from that function. It’s the left’s equivalent of the right’s “if you want to pay more taxes, no one’s stopping you” argument, which is flawed for the same reason.
The common principle is this: Whether I like a particular policy or not, I’m entitled to its benefits since I don’t have a choice but to accept its drawbacks.
Well, the premise is we are suppose to make a choice between a party that wants government to allow business to do whatever it wants to make a profit and a party that wants the government to control everything. So, like most issues, the idea that we need a moderate amount of this or that is of little interest to most of the partisan blogs. That last thing they want is for people to actually think about the issues and come to their own conclusions.
I’d challenge that equivalence, AD. What I’ve heard from the left is closer to “you have no moral right to criticize program X if you’ve accepted its benefits.” The equivalent of that from the right would be “you have no moral right to call for higher taxes unless you’ve voluntarily raised your own.” I’ve never heard anyone say that.
“If you want to pay more taxes, no one’s stopping you” is a simple logical proposition that might be true or might be false. If you send the IRS too much money, they may in fact send some back. I’ve never attempted it to find out.
What I’ve heard more often from the right is “if you think project X is worth funding, do it with your own money” or even “put your money where your mouth is.” These seem pretty reasonable ways to deflate fantasies and call bluffs. Allen, for example, declared that 2/3 of California’s $100B high speed rail cost would go to excess profits. Great, Allen, become a contractor yourself and enjoy the 66% profit margin you imagine is built in.
Dr. J,
While you are technically correct that the statement “If you want to pay more taxes, no one’s stopping you” is essentially just an observation (which might be incorrect), however it seems to me that in practice it is just a crude way of essentially saying “you have no moral right to call for higher taxes unless you’ve voluntarily raised your own.” So, my equivalence stands.
The argument that worthy projects should be funded privately is interesting, but in my experience I do hear the “pay more taxes if you want to” argument at least as often.
Fair enough, AD, I just don’t hear anyone on the right saying that. I mean, I don’t say it, and you don’t say it, and DaGoat doesn’t say it, and there we are. Maybe you hang with a rougher crowd.
One man’s big government is another man’s piss-ant.
What you want Patrick is not what others may want, thus we have political parties. I want government to exact control over the nation in the name of law and order. If that requires a BIG government, so-be-it.
Big Government, Small Government: who cares?
The question to ask is “what do you want government to do?”
And only after you have answered that question, can talk you about the size of government and the size of the tax bite.
QF, absolutely wrong. Too big and ineffective and/or inhibative, or too small and ineffective and out smarted. Both bad.
Well Allen I certainly agree everyone has the right to want the government they think is best. I would never question your right to your view any more than you’d question my right to mine
My point was simply that because u support or oppose one program doesn’t mean you have to support or oppose all programs.
There has been an argument from some on the left that if you want a smaller government then you cannot accept any government programs and I think that is wrong.
By the same token I wouldn’t argue that your support for a larger government means you want government to run every aspect of our lives.
Have a great weekend !
Patrick,
I commend you for writing an article that asks tough philosophical questions about government rather than proceeding from a set of assumptions.
With regards to whether “small government” types are being hypocritical for partaking in the benefits of a government program that he/she claims to oppose, I think it depends both upon the underlying beliefs that the “small government” person claims to believe in as well as the nature of the program in question.
Consider government subsidies to businesses. If a “small government” person claims to oppose government subsidies as basic principle but lobbies for the government to subsidize his/her own business, I think that is patently hypocritical.
If a “small government” person claims to oppose government subsidies as basic principle but takes advantage of an existing government program in order to subsidize his/her business, I see that as a tad bit hypocritical, no not nearly as much as the individual who claims to oppose government subsidies as a basic rule and yet lobbies for government subsidies.
Let us consider, finally, those government programs in which the government enjoys a monopoly or near monopoly. Public roads would be a perfect example. Most Americans and even most “small government” types accept the legitimacy of the government raising revenue for building roads and building these roads. Among “hardcore” libertarians, however, you will find plenty of people who oppose the idea of public roads. Yet how many of these people actually refuse to use the public roads that they claim to oppose?
Yet I do not see this latter case as an example of hypocrisy, and the reason why I don;t is because the government holds a virtual monopoly on the creation of roads. Yes, private roads and toll roads do exist, but they make up an extremely small proportion of roads in this country. If a person wants to travel by car from one county to another, he/she really doesn’t have any other option other than to use public roads. If private roads and highways were more readily available in every city, county, and state, then I might expect such harcore libertarians to avoid using the public roads that they claim to oppose. However, because the government maintains a near monopoly on the funding and creation of roads and highways, I do not consider such individuals to be hypocritical.
A more relevant example might be Social Security. Many libertarians, constitutionalists, and fiscal conservatives oppose the U.S. Social Security program either because they believe it to be unconstitutional or because it violates the most basic tenets of free market capitalism. Yet, I doubt that many of these libertarians, constitutionalists, and fiscal conservatives refuse to accept Social Security benefits when they retire. I don’t believe it is hypocritical for these individuals to accept these benefits because these individuals were all forced to pay into this system in the first place.
I do think it is hypocritical, however, for “small government” types who claim to support small government and free market capitalism as a basic premise and yet are extremely selective in which government programs they support and which programs they oppose.
I have a real problem, for instance, with individuals who repeatedly rail against government welfare programs for the poor and yet are completely silent about the vast amounts of corporate welfare that the government gives to major banks and private military contractors. I also have trouble taking seriously an individual who wants to cut some $5 billion federal program for the poor and yet supports a $750 billion elective war overseas or a $550 billion prescription drug program that his/her party rammed through Congress.
Government is a necessary evil, it is necessary, but it is prone to corruption, bloat, meddling, and the destruction of that which it is supposed to protect (In the case of the United States, based on founding documents, that would be the establishment of liberty.)
What do we want Government FOR???
here’s what I want: I want those who prey on their neighbours to be stopped-I want the money I earn, to be worth something more than the ink it’s printed on or the base metals it’s minted from, I want foreign aggressors to think, then think again, and then again, nervously, about attacking me and my fellow citizens, until they think it’s a truly BAD idea.
I want government to leave me alone. I want our economic system to be competition-based, and that means nobody so big that they’re ‘too big to fail’, I want the freedom to succeed or fail on my own merits, not succeed because of my ancestry, nor to fail for that reason.
I want roads that work, I want the mail delivered on time, I want the fire department to keep my house from burning down my neighbours in a fire, and I want them to make a reasonable effort at extracting my suffocating corpus before it cooks.
I want wildfires contained, I want to not drink water that’s full of dumped chemicals or radioactive isotopes dumped by someone else.
I think selling rotten meat is a bad thing, and I want the guy selling it to face penalties.
I want some recourse if I hire a contractor, and he rips me off, and I’ll accept that others probably want the same thing.
I want, should I go to court, to face a jury not of the ones who were too dumb to get away, or whom the lawyers thought would be ‘malleable’, but my peers, skeptics preferably.
I want people who are arrested, to get a FAIR trial, a good chance of defending themselves, and I want prosecutors to have to absolutely prove guilt, not to “a reasonable standard”, but absolutely, if that means a criminal might walk, well, so be it-it is the responsibility of the accuser to prove guilt. I want that.
I want prison sentences to be based on the number of lives harmed or destroyed-a guy who knocks over a gas station might harm one family, or two-a guy who embezzles millions is harming THOUSANDS of families. There should be hard time for that, and not in a country-club atmosphere.
I want my government to stop encouraging malinvestment, and focus the tax collection on REVENUE GENERATION, rather than social or societal engineering. Bailouts have no place in my vision of what government should do, unless the bailout is directly necessary due to the government’s own bad policies or actions.
I want foreigners to hesitate before harming an American, I think Teddy Roosevelt had the best antiterror policy ever- “Return hostages alive, or hostage-takers dead.” The world is a bad place, full of bad people, if the bad people would rather prey on Frenchmen or Englishmen than Americans, I’m good with that.
I want the government to handle Aviation-I think the FAA is one of the few bright spots the Fed has, it fulfills a function that is necessary (Infrastructural upkeep and regulation). I do NOT want TSA, or agencies like that. It wasn’t a failure in airport policy that let 9/11/01 happen, it was a population conditioned to accept and yeild to bullying, and rely overmuch on Government to solve immediate problems.
Likewise with Katrina-New Orleans spent millions on a football stadium, and not one thin dime on flood control locally. This is insanity to me-the area floods regularly and the city sits below sea-level, on the entrance of the hurricane highway, and gets hit regularly. If you’re going to build a city in a zone custom made for disaster, you should already be able to handle disasters.
I want the Federal Government to regulate interstate and international commerce, and to look out for OUR interests while doing so-not pay businesses to take their factories (and jobs) overseas as it does currently and has for longer than many postes here have been alive. “Free” trade does NOT mean “Subsidized De Industrialization”.
I want the schools to provide an education, not a babysitting service or chemical riot-control, or indoctrination in any of the supposedly competing political and economic philosophies. Education does not mean learning how to parse fill-in-the-dot multiple choice standardized tests. It means essay questions and show-your-work math. I’d happily pay an extra 10-20% of my property taxes to get that kind of schooling for the kids of my neighbours.
If there is a robber in my local store, I want the police to show up BEFORE I have to exercise my carry permit, and if someone STOPS a crime, that person should NOT have to risk lawsuits for hurting the predator, nor face being treated as a criminal by the tardy police and ineffective prosecutors.
I want goverment to protect my right to defend my home from intruders, attackers, and home-invasion types. I want the right to declare my dooryard a death-zone for trespassers, or the right to permit any who wish to enter at MY discretion.
I want local codes to protect tenants from land-lords, and Land-lords from tenants, equally.
I want contracts to be enforceable.
I want the right to pick up hitchikers, regardless of the risk to myself, in the understanding that I take that risk knowing full well it IS a risk.
I want idiots to have the right ride their motorcycles without helmets, or drive their automobiles without seat-belts, airbags, etc. if they so choose. I want parents to have the right to turn off airbags if THEY need to put the baby-seat in the front-seat, or have short-statured passengers who wear glasses.
I want the right to suffer and bear the consequences of my own bad choices-If I’m an idiot who drives without a seat-belt, and I die, it’s my fault, not the manufacturer’s or the highway patrolman’s, or the fault of the dealership…MY fault, my cost, my burden.
I want idiots to have the right to overdose in their own homes on whatever intoxicant makes them pretend they’re happy-but I also want the law to come down like a tonne of cement on them if they dare to so much as sit in the driver’s seat of a car while high/baked/stoned/drunk/tweaked…because driving while “Messed up” is infringing on the lives, rights, freedoms, and safety of others, without their consent.
I want wife-beaters to go to jail. I want Rapists to go to jail (because it’s too hard to get a jury to convict in a capital crimes case), I want child-molesters to be dumped in the furthest reaches of central alaska with a field-jacket, knife, six feet of fishing line and a piece of flint. It’s possible to survive it, and it would keep them away from decent people.
I think it would be a fine thing to repeal the amendment that gives 18 year olds the right to vote-we don’t let them drink alcohol, and a vote is a far more dangerous thing than a drunk behind the wheel-the number of people you harm is a LOT greater than you could possibly smash into or run over with your SUV while hammered.
I think it should be 21, for the same reason we don’t let anyone under 21 buy alcohol.
I don’t think the government should be in the business of loaning money. Period. It’s the inflation effect, government floods the ed market with money, so every Jack and Jill out there ends up paying more for the same services, and most of the time, they can’t pay it back, so they end up with a debt that is worse than the lost opportunities that they would have without the debt.
I want my government’s services to live within its means. Deficits are NOT good-eventually, the money runs out, the debt remains. Keynes may have been a brilliant man, but his theory is bunk.
I see no reason for the United STates to act against other nations except when there is enough provable cause to motivate Congress to declare war. We have not had a declared war since 1945, yet we have been AT war every decade since, at increasing costs to men, materiel, money, and the national psyche. THIS needs to END, if it’s worth killing for, it better be worth dying for.
Citizenship is a burden, and a responsibility, not just a privelage. those who would come to benefit from our nation, SHOULD have to work for it, sacrifice for it…or be born here. I have no problem with ‘anchor babies’-you deport the mother afterward, ends the anchor problem and there are hundereds of thousands of people who want to adopt, and should be able to.
(Yeah, I AM that much of a bastard.)
Abortion: Government has no place in this debate. PERIOD. So long as nobody (who has been born, and is thus likely a citizen) has been harmed, let the argument rage among localities-eventually, the best answer will be shown by becoming the standard answer.
I believe in antitrust laws-when they are evenly, honestly, and thoroughly enforced. As I said, “Too big to fail” is too big to succeed. Corporations are not people, stop giving them the same rights as people, and for ghu’s sake, stop exempting insurance from antitrust! Monopolies and Oligopolies are the antithesis of a free market.
I think there are three questions:
“what do you want government to do?” <– represents democracy in action
“what can the government do?” <– representing practicality based on sound policy, economics, science, even politics & the reality of budgets.
“what should the government do?” <– representing law & morality
What the people want may not be practical. What may be practical may not be ethical or lawful. What may be lawful may not be wanted by the people. And any permutation thereof.
We could all type a specific list like Cannonshop did, and I bet they would all be a bit different. We live our lives in a constant state of compromise. Our wants and desires are all a bit different, but we give in a bit to “keep the peace” and avoid conflict.
In a democracy “the majority rules”; yet to obtain a majority, it generally takes compromise. I would suggest to you that this element is missing from our governing process today.
The radical ends of both major parties are literally at war. There is no compromise. Those of us “in the middle”, who are numerically larger than either the Far Left or the Far Right, keep getting yanked back toward the extreme ends primarily because of the abortion issue, ineptly created and operated welfare systems, taxes, and foreign conflicts (wars). Most of you agree?
You can’t tell me that we can’t come to some sort of compromise on all these issues. As a life long Rebup who has been driven away by people like Tom Delay and Dick Cheney, I now call myself a moderately conservative independent who happens to be an active Chrisitian believer and church attender.
I think that life begins at conception. I am a Pro-lifer. I don’t believe that my beliefs should be dicated to others by passing federal or state laws to “pound” everyone into complying. As Christians, I think we should go the Gandhi route and show people how to live through quiet deeds and actions … not loud screaming, harsh words and violent protests. We need to just use the New Testament as our guide.
With regards to welfare, the Canadians, a decade or so ago, were going through the same financial crisis that we are experiencing…maybe even worse. Read what they did about it.
http://www.newsmax.com/Stossel/LuisFortuno-PuertoRico-Canada-ChrisChristie/2011/06/16/id/400293
We all know that the tax system is skewed towards the wealthy and was designed so that we commonbreds cannot understand it. It takes specialized attorneys and cpa’s to decipher it and find the loopholes designed specifically for the Big’s who can afford the specialized attorneys and cpa’s. The Big’s also write, submit and pay for laws that will pay them unwarranted subsidies, and allow them to indulge in legalized gambling with other people’s money on Wall Street, needlessly driving up the prices on almost all commodity products.
Finally…who now thinks that we cannot handle the conflict in Afghanistan with drones and inclandestine activity, and that we still need boots on the ground over there? Who thinks that the money would be better spent here at home? Who thinks that we should be building schools, roads and water systems for third world countries when we have people who are suffering terribly here at home? I’ll tell you who…the military industrial complex, the general’s who go to work for them after they retire, and the elected officials who these mega corporations buy votes from.
In order to get change initiated, the payoff system in D.C. needs to be shut down. Our Supreme Court did us in when they made it legal for corporations and super pac’s to dole out unlimited sums of money to political parties, incumbents and those seeking office. Read Ezra Klein’s piece in Newsweek’s Nov. 8, 2010 issue.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-240969864.html
Now go to this link and get involved with the move to get money out of government. This is the key to change, friends. All else is moot until we do so.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/get-money-out-making-wave_b_992126.html
What a lot of hot air………….
dduck…your post is self described “drivel”, and you define mine as “hot air”. I think you were too hard on yourself, but you might be right about mine.
The only thing I ask is that when I do post, and you disagree with me, that you address what is “hot air” and give me reasons why you think so. You might change my mind. That’s what this site is all about…right? Sharing ideas. Learning. Moderating views. Changing one’s mind. Or is it just a place to sermonize and criticize?
JJ, I apologize. I was not targeting you specifically at all, it was directed in general and to a much more “hot air” commenter.
Sorry.
Well, I thought it could have been directed at me. I must have felt a little guilty and thought your statement had merit.
dduck, when making a comment like the “hot air” one, it’s always a good idea to say in the comment who it’s aimed at. As I understand the commenting rules saying something about a post isn’t the same as attacking the poster so it’s not like you would be violating the rules.
Late to both the post and the thread.
Just want to say that I find both (the post and the vast majority of the comments)thoughtful, thought-provoking and reasoned — no “hot air” here. One of the better threads on TMV.
Have my own thoughts on the role of government, but most of them have been already covered by one or another. Want to take the time that some of our readers have so properly taken to express them … sometime.
OK, I’ll be specific. I was trying not to violate any rules, but I found CS’s stuff to be overly long and chock full of I wants that were obvious or not feasible or desirable. You may want to jump off a building just don’t land on top of me as you smoke on the way down onto a car with its seat belts off and air bags disabled and a baby seat in the front seat, etc, etc.
Specific enough, or just hot air on my part?
P.S. I loved the post itself.
DD while I thought the response by CS over done and way to specific I think you can sum a lot of it up by saying govt should protect you from others but not yourself.
Thank you everyone so much for the wonderful comments, please keep them coming.
But in some cases, given the way our health care system and insurance system works, protecting someone from “themselves” is really protecting the rest of society from their stupidity and excessive risk-taking.
JS, yup……………….
Jim Satterfield says:
“But in some cases, given the way our health care system and insurance system works, protecting someone from “themselves” is really protecting the rest of society from their stupidity and excessive risk-taking.”
Agree. It is probably very seldom when someone’s stupid behavior that, at first glance, only affects the so-called “yourself” and where government should not “interfere” in fact does affect others besides the “yourself.” There will often be others affected by that “yourself’s” actions: e.g. “yourself’s” children who have lost a father, a care taker, and who now may have to be taken care of by that big “government” we oppose
I’d like the government to punish obvious wrong doing, but stay out of personal choices.
If I want to use a light bulb that uses more energy than another, I’d like that choice. I’d rather see the government use an advertising campaign encouraging people to be “good citizens” than banning outright a particular type of lightbulb. I’d probably respond better to well-meant propaganda than to outright coercion.
I think government has better things to do and should be doing them. It’s the overkill that drives people crazy.
As far as benefits, anyone can refuse them as I did Medicare Part D because it wasn’t funded and wasn’t a benefit to the whole society, but rather to only a portion. Not fair. Not just.
The answer to the question is, “No, not in the real world.” The added words are in order because there should be the least government possible, and we must settle for (slightly!) more than what would be the ideal. The added words properly do NOT reflect any kind of wrongful collectivist or authoritarian preferences, which are the opposite of American preferences as well as philosophically defective.
Jim and Dorian,
To the extent that our bad choices naturally affect others, the government certainly can and should regulate them. (There does need to be some threshold of harm, however. Seeing people act stupidly annoys me but that doesn’t count as harm.)
However, I object to using this principle in cases where the influence is government-mandated. The frequent example cited regarding health care is those who don’t have insurance getting care at the expense of those who do. But that is not a natural consequence. It is because hospitals are required to provide emergency service to everyone. So, we are justifying a government action to correct an imbalance which was imposed by the government. This line of reasoning effectively gives the government unlimited power–since if it wants to regulate something it can just cause an artificial externality that then needs correcting.
I’m not opposed to laws requiring hospitals provide emergency care. But, when we implement those laws we should understand their negative effects and be willing to live with it. You can’t have laws that require charity without also causing inherent unfairness. Trying to correct that by layering more mandates on top is not right, in my opinion.
“Layering,” indeed. Implement program A, experience unintended or unforeseen (at least to program A’s proponents) unfortunate consequences. Reform program A? Oh, no. To mitigate those unpleasant effects of program A, it’s time for program B, C, etc.