The lame duck Congress suffered through its usual year end brinkmanship before avoiding a government shutdown. Horrors! What would people do if politicians weren’t able to legislate, regulate, and dictate in the “public interest?”
The traditional civics book notion of government is that the state does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. If the state focused on its most fundamental tasks, we might notice if it closed.
Unfortunately, the state has turned into something very different. It’s now a welfare agency for the wealthy, a vast soup kitchen for special interests, an engine for social engineering at home and abroad, and a national nanny determined to run citizens’ lives. Closing down Washington’s great income redistribution racket actually would help most Americans.
Yet, as I point out in the American Spectator: “perhaps the most irritating, even infuriating, government activity is paternalism. There’s a basic difference between a gang of highwaymen and Congress. The first group takes your cash and then leaves you alone. The second group empties your wallet or purse, and then insists on sticking around for your benefit to manage your life. Your new overseers expect not only regular payment but eternal gratitude.”
Consider the campaign against smoking. Adults are entitled to smoke cancer sticks if they want. The idea that not one restaurant or bar in a city of thousands or state of millions can allow someone to smoke is, well, outrageous.