A girl I love married an astute man, and I sometimes discuss government with him, mostly in an effort to cleanse him of a few notions which I find insufficiently anti-statist.
When ever I think of him and of government in the same paragraph, I am heartened, even though he still insists it is good that taxpayers underwrite athletic stadiums. That is because, in a fit of disgust at theocratic politicians, a disgust I share, he once remarked loudly that these guys do not comprehend that "a government is not a religion."
Leading us to this morning's text.
Which opens thusly:
Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness...
Out of rhetorical compassion, I omit the remainder of my written harangue this Sabbath.
2 comments:
While in another chapter of the Book of Antistatism, it says that there are certain things that should be paid for by all. Not many, mind you, but a few---such as police, fire, roadways, national defense, etc. There should also be provided hope--hope, not results. At any time the haves refuse to recognize that, in the interest of self preservation, certaing things should be provided for the have-nots, they risk the comeuppance visited on the French royalty. I, too dislike guvmint interference in every aspect of life, but I also dislike the idean of mobs roaming the streets looking to load the tumbrels. Just a thought. JAGSC
"Tumbrils." Is is so pleasant to see the evocative old words in use.
Any disagreement I have with you would be close to quibbling. One of the functions of any organization -- Boy Scouts, Baptist Church, AARP, government -- is to establish hope, or the illusion of hope, depending on the integrity of the group leaders. No organization would exist if it did not appeal to the human desire for better self, better world.
The things I write these days represent an increasingly solid conviction that government does not strive to foster hope in its subjects. Government has discovered the vast rewards to its practitioners in hawking hope which it knows is a chimera.
As it mimics Topsy it becomes more distant from its citizenry, fenced in by its primary drives. They are the lust to retain power for its own sake and, increasingly, the personal economic benefit of being one of the taxing and spending controllers.
The stock libertarian answer to satisfy our compassion for the poor and otherwise troubled is the market. Reducing the ridiculous cost of government -- direct cost and opportunity cost -- will supposedly free vast resources for charitable work.
No, that doesn't quite satisy me, either, but I can't identify a better starting point for the debate.
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