The Nature of Government: What Michael Moore Does Not Understand

While watching Sean Hannity was interviewing his pal Michael Moore, Moore asked "Why do you hate this government so much?" The context was Hannity's reluctance to allow the government to take care of Americans with endless entitlement programs. I have pondered the question and have decided the question shows a grave ignorance over the nature of government and the precarious situation we find ourselves in vis-a-vis this government. Attitudes toward government form the basis of political philosophies and underscore the fundamental difference between Conservatives and Liberals.

Governments wield power. In fact, power is the core of government. Governments throughout the centuries have wielded their power in various ways. When government power is wielded by a king, dictator, or oligarchy, the result has eventually been upheaval from the governed. These governments have either yielded to democratic reforms or suffered revolution and/or collapse. Our nation's founders experienced the latter and established a replacement government that reflected their extreme suspicion of government. They set the Constitution, a written document, as the supreme law above all the government rulers. Rulers can be fickle but a written law is immutable. Then lest the nation's rulers just ignore the constitution, they made the rulers accountable to the people, drew lines between federal and state powers, divided the government in three parts (executive, legislative, and judicial) and set them at odds with each other through and ingenious check-and-balance system. Then they wrote a bill of rights listing what the government could not do. Hey, Mr. Moore, if you think Hannity was suspicious of government, you should have met George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.

Government, therefore, is a magnate of people who crave power. We should be suspicious of those who wish to wield power over us because wielding power always means curbing our freedom. As a conservative, I believe government should exercise its power to balance my freedom against yours. You have the right to swing your fist anywhere you want but your freedom must end where my nose begins. Government must stop you from hitting my nose or punish you if you do. Making laws against murder, robbery and such is a legitimate role of the government. With power comes virtually endless resources through its ability to tax. Government then also becomes a magnate for those desiring wealth. Liberals believe that power and wealth should be used to better society beyond just preventing you from hitting my nose. For lack of a better term, I call this social engineering. Our experience with social engineering has been largely detrimental. There are three basic reasons why social engineering is doomed to failure.

First, politicians are just not smart enough. Virtually no one is. We rely on free markets to do what no person or small group of persons can do. Social programs are engineered by people who do not know what they are doing, make assumptions that bear no resemblance to reality or work at cross purposes to the governed for their own benefit. The war on poverty has spent trillions without eliminating poverty. Medicaid and Medicare cost seven times their projected estimates. Congressmen are still being caught in bribery and tax evasion scandals.

Second, your social engineering interferes with my right to swing my fist. You may argue that I do not need to swing my fist but what the heck gives you the right to decide? If I want to make a billion dollars in a year, why do you get to decide you need half? Forcing me to work for the benefit of others is slavery. Is is alright to enslave people based on their fitting in a certain category? If I decide you should be my slave because you have blond hair, would that be OK? Our nation's founders believed in maximizing the freedom of white males which we have now expanded to mean the freedom of all people. Singling out a category of people for tax punishment (rich people), economic punishment (not allowing Rush Limbaugh to buy a NFL team based on political speech), or opportunity denial (preferring minorities over whites in college admission) are all social engineering endeavors that run counter to the premise that everyone is created equally and are equal under the law.

Third, expanding the role of government amplifies the negative aspects of its nature, usually without great benefit. The more government does, the more lobbyist flood into the government tempting the power holders with worldly goods. Companies that could use their capital to produce more goods and services are, instead, paying campaign donations to stave off threatened regulations and with good reason. Government power does not stand idle. Bureaucracies grow through endless hiring and justify their existence with never-ending regulation, most of which is costly and nugatory. How much of our national productivity is lost to lawyers and lobbyists dealing with this asinine nonsense? Some regulation is necessary. You should not be able to steal my money via a Ponzi scheme (like Bernie Madoff did to thousands) but even when regulation is in place the government often fails to do its job (or do we blame this on the extreme incompetence of Tim Geithner who was the head regulator in New York at the time?) Experience has shown that he governs best who governs least.

Things are especially precarious now because the liberal have developed an us-versus-them mentality. Conservatives are heavily scrutinized while Liberals get a pass. Hypocrisy is at record levels with Democrats who now run the entire government. While Tom Delay had to be run out of Congress for, as I understand it, being mean to Democrats, Charles Rangel keeps his chairmanship while committing tax fraud. Nancy Pelosi breaks out in tears and demands Wilson apologize to everyone multiple times for calling the President a liar (which turns out to be true) while Grayson can use defamatory lies to demean Republicans with near impunity.

With Congress and the White House in the same party the power check between the two has broken down. With the appointment of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, we break down the check of the judicial branch because she does not believe the constitution to be what the founders intended, an immutable law. The courts already pretend the ninth and tenth amendments do not exist, while the Federal Government leaves its heavy footprint on the backsides of the states. The first amendment grants the press special powers to be the watch dogs over the government but they have abdicated their role, all tilting left as well. While the corruption of ACORN, a recipient of billions in tax dollars, was being exposed by undercover novices, the New York Times did not cover the story saying that too many of its reporters were on vacation at the time. Yet the "Naked Politician" was covered (sorry for the pun) during that week. The liberals in Maryland do not seem to be as concerned with ACORN helping set up brothels with underage, illegal aliens as much as they are that the undercover agents used clandestine recording devices. Unchecked, the White House has stocked their ranks with tax cheats, lobbyists and Marxists. The environment for corruption and abuse of power by the the White House is rife. Mr. Moore is naive if he does not think that Obama and the Chicago thugachracy he brought with him do not have the ability or inclination to abuse government power. Besides, the last president who misused his power (in that case he fixed the outcome of a law suit against himself for sexual harassment) was let off and still held in high esteem by many people.

This leaves the American people to protest and threaten the House of Representatives with reprisal in the next election. This may be the only way left to correct this mess. The White House has reacted to this by slandering the people who oppose his initiatives. And in a bizarre turn they have declared war on Fox News because it covers the protests, does not faun over the president, and has commentators that actually criticize the President's polices. Liberals have tried to brunt opposition, not with reasoned arguments, but by labeling opponents as racists.

Mr. Moore, I do not hate this government but I do not trust it or any government. Government must earn my trust each day and I will always be suspicious of anyone wishing to wield power over me regardless of their political stripes. However, never before has so much of the safeguards put in place by the founders been breached because of the wide-spread power of liberalism and the inability of most of the press to do their jobs! Let's at least put the Congress back in the hands of some conservatives, then we'll talk. I bet the press will start doing its job then!