Leave It to the Professionals
The big news over the last two weeks has been the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. It has pushed all the other real news off the front page. Unemployment, the European debt crisis, scandals like Fast and Furious that actually got people killed, the unconstitutional super committee's lack of progress, president Obama’s stated intent to exercise dictatorial powers and a hundred other things that actually have facts behind them have been pushed into the background Instead, we are focusing on allegations behind which facts are vague or non-existent and the whole discussion has devolved into criticism about how the Cain campaign is handling or mishandling the scandal, whether racism is involved in the perceived witch-hunt and how it will impact the other Republican hopefuls.
Amidst all the chatter, I head a quote that really got my attention. It was from David Brooks. He stated, in defense of political "elitists" that "running for office is for professionals" as is the business of governing. Obviously this was a criticism not only of Herman Cain’s handling of the scandal but the very existence of his candidacy. In the mind of Mr. Brooks and his elitist sympathizers, Herman Cain and others like him, men and women not groomed by the right colleges and the right mentors, people who have not been immersed in the government culture, who do not speak in government approved ways and haven’t been taught how to approach problems with the government mindset have no business trying to break into the club or, God forbid, actually attempting to govern!
Unfortunately, this attitude is very pervasive, not only among the ruling class where one would expect it, but among the populace as well. Government has become so large and complicated that the general assumption is that one needs special knowledge provided by certain institutions and organizations in order to effectively manage the beast. It is this attitude that creates the chasm between the ruling class and the ruled. Government is mysterious and scary and it takes a "special" person to govern. The rest of us are to remain in awe of our wise and benevolent government and the people who make it work.
This is not how America was meant to be. While there is no doubt most of the founders had an idea about what type of person should govern, those ideas were very different from those among the ruling class today. A "leading citizen" in the early period of our history was a man who had established his reputation in his community or state through a successful career in the private sector and as a servant to his fellows. His grasp of the issues and challenges were born of experience and contact with his neighbors. Because the scope of government activity was so limited, the problems and solutions were usually clear and concise. If he was chosen by his peers for service in the state, he was not expected to make a career of it. They were expected to be short term custodians of the liberties of the people they served.
How far we have strayed. Today we are governed by career politicians and a multitude of highly paid bureaucrats. We look at the negative situation we find ourselves in and lament the waste and corruption endemic to a government that overregulates and overtaxes. We have become alarmed at the loss of our freedom and the burdens our government has placed on our lives and our posterity. We are discouraged when our elected leaders fail to make common sense changes to reverse couses of action any thinking person can see are absurd. It is as if we have suddenly awakened and wonder how we have come so far along the road to tyranny and ruin.
The real problem is that government is constantly attempting to do things government is, by definition, ill equipped to accomplish. Therefore, to justify weilding the force of government in a multitude of places where it does not belong and excuse the theft of the average citizen’s liberty and wealth, several things must happen. First, the people involved, elected and bureaucratic, need to develop a certain mindset. They must convince themselves that their ability to solve the problems of others exceeds that of the average person. Whether that results from grooming that is part of a family heritage, a certain educational path, an apprenticeship under those who have already achieved high position or simply an over-inflated sense of self, such an individual believes they are better equipped to make the decisions that affect the lives of the majority than the individuals in that majority themselves.
Second, because of the inherent inefficiency and immorality of taking free choices from individuals and appropriating them to the ruling class, government must somehow come to inspire awe. Since it cannot achieve this through effectiveness, it does it through size and complexity. A long descending spiral of laws, rules, regulations and taxes results, making government hopelessly complicated, huge and intrusive. The first attempt to solve a problem through redistribution or regulation creates two or three new problems requiring more regulation, redistribution and bureaucrats, creating more problems requiring even more regulations, redistribution and bureaucrats and on and on and on. Government is a perpetual motion machine that grows exponentially over time and requires more and more specification-i.e. experts and lawyers, to even begin to understand it. These "wise" people don’t actually know how to solve problems because a government solution is the greatest of oxymorons, they merely have an understanding of the arcane system of rules and regulation and know how to use them to benefit themselves and their friends.
Finally, government, policy and politics become incomprehensible to the average person. No longer is politics about ideas, ideals or philosophical approaches to the proper scope of government activity but specific, "technocratic" and often incomprehensible applications of government power to every area of life. Attempting to solve all the problems of the human condition by forcing individuals to conform to the vision of a few elitists, destroying their liberty and stealing the fruits of their labor, is a fool’s errand and horribly immoral. It benefits the few at the expense of the many. By convincing the majority that government is the answer to any question simply enables government to perpetually grow because they are always creating more problems requiring ever more solutions. Politicians can run on these self created problems and once the government bureaucracy that continually creates these problems and requires so much of our liberty and treasure grows large enough, the politicians can run against it even though their "solutions" will only create even more problems to "solve." This is the world Mr. Brook’s elitists have created.
Herman Cain and others like him are the stakes in the hand of lady liberty, ready to be driven into the heart of the beast that is our intrusive, oppressive, criminal government. They boldly assert that government by the experts is not what was intended in the American experiment and only leads to tyranny. They loudly claim that government is not the solution to the multitude of our problems, free individuals making individual decisions about their own lives generate much better solutions. Only by rejecting our current paradigm of government as the ultimate solution for all problems and eliminating the grip the two party elite have on power will we recapture the ideal of the citizen servant and find true freedom from the tyranny of the professionals.
Amidst all the chatter, I head a quote that really got my attention. It was from David Brooks. He stated, in defense of political "elitists" that "running for office is for professionals" as is the business of governing. Obviously this was a criticism not only of Herman Cain’s handling of the scandal but the very existence of his candidacy. In the mind of Mr. Brooks and his elitist sympathizers, Herman Cain and others like him, men and women not groomed by the right colleges and the right mentors, people who have not been immersed in the government culture, who do not speak in government approved ways and haven’t been taught how to approach problems with the government mindset have no business trying to break into the club or, God forbid, actually attempting to govern!
Unfortunately, this attitude is very pervasive, not only among the ruling class where one would expect it, but among the populace as well. Government has become so large and complicated that the general assumption is that one needs special knowledge provided by certain institutions and organizations in order to effectively manage the beast. It is this attitude that creates the chasm between the ruling class and the ruled. Government is mysterious and scary and it takes a "special" person to govern. The rest of us are to remain in awe of our wise and benevolent government and the people who make it work.
This is not how America was meant to be. While there is no doubt most of the founders had an idea about what type of person should govern, those ideas were very different from those among the ruling class today. A "leading citizen" in the early period of our history was a man who had established his reputation in his community or state through a successful career in the private sector and as a servant to his fellows. His grasp of the issues and challenges were born of experience and contact with his neighbors. Because the scope of government activity was so limited, the problems and solutions were usually clear and concise. If he was chosen by his peers for service in the state, he was not expected to make a career of it. They were expected to be short term custodians of the liberties of the people they served.
How far we have strayed. Today we are governed by career politicians and a multitude of highly paid bureaucrats. We look at the negative situation we find ourselves in and lament the waste and corruption endemic to a government that overregulates and overtaxes. We have become alarmed at the loss of our freedom and the burdens our government has placed on our lives and our posterity. We are discouraged when our elected leaders fail to make common sense changes to reverse couses of action any thinking person can see are absurd. It is as if we have suddenly awakened and wonder how we have come so far along the road to tyranny and ruin.
The real problem is that government is constantly attempting to do things government is, by definition, ill equipped to accomplish. Therefore, to justify weilding the force of government in a multitude of places where it does not belong and excuse the theft of the average citizen’s liberty and wealth, several things must happen. First, the people involved, elected and bureaucratic, need to develop a certain mindset. They must convince themselves that their ability to solve the problems of others exceeds that of the average person. Whether that results from grooming that is part of a family heritage, a certain educational path, an apprenticeship under those who have already achieved high position or simply an over-inflated sense of self, such an individual believes they are better equipped to make the decisions that affect the lives of the majority than the individuals in that majority themselves.
Second, because of the inherent inefficiency and immorality of taking free choices from individuals and appropriating them to the ruling class, government must somehow come to inspire awe. Since it cannot achieve this through effectiveness, it does it through size and complexity. A long descending spiral of laws, rules, regulations and taxes results, making government hopelessly complicated, huge and intrusive. The first attempt to solve a problem through redistribution or regulation creates two or three new problems requiring more regulation, redistribution and bureaucrats, creating more problems requiring even more regulations, redistribution and bureaucrats and on and on and on. Government is a perpetual motion machine that grows exponentially over time and requires more and more specification-i.e. experts and lawyers, to even begin to understand it. These "wise" people don’t actually know how to solve problems because a government solution is the greatest of oxymorons, they merely have an understanding of the arcane system of rules and regulation and know how to use them to benefit themselves and their friends.
Finally, government, policy and politics become incomprehensible to the average person. No longer is politics about ideas, ideals or philosophical approaches to the proper scope of government activity but specific, "technocratic" and often incomprehensible applications of government power to every area of life. Attempting to solve all the problems of the human condition by forcing individuals to conform to the vision of a few elitists, destroying their liberty and stealing the fruits of their labor, is a fool’s errand and horribly immoral. It benefits the few at the expense of the many. By convincing the majority that government is the answer to any question simply enables government to perpetually grow because they are always creating more problems requiring ever more solutions. Politicians can run on these self created problems and once the government bureaucracy that continually creates these problems and requires so much of our liberty and treasure grows large enough, the politicians can run against it even though their "solutions" will only create even more problems to "solve." This is the world Mr. Brook’s elitists have created.
Herman Cain and others like him are the stakes in the hand of lady liberty, ready to be driven into the heart of the beast that is our intrusive, oppressive, criminal government. They boldly assert that government by the experts is not what was intended in the American experiment and only leads to tyranny. They loudly claim that government is not the solution to the multitude of our problems, free individuals making individual decisions about their own lives generate much better solutions. Only by rejecting our current paradigm of government as the ultimate solution for all problems and eliminating the grip the two party elite have on power will we recapture the ideal of the citizen servant and find true freedom from the tyranny of the professionals.
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