This is an election year and candidates from both parties are making the case that we should allow them to run the country for the next two years. The most obvious question I have is why should anyone vote for someone to run the country who doesn't even know what government is let alone how it works?
The rage since Ronald Reagan has been for smaller government. That much is fine because the issue is not the size it is whether or not it works and is efficient in providing the services that have always been the most important function. The problem is almost all the Republicans and even some Democrats don't have even a clue about why John Locke and others like Algernon Sydney proposed government that was by the consent of the governed.
Republicans howl about taxation being confiscation yet most of us don't howl Wal-mart is confiscating our money when we purchase goods. Taxes are just the price we all pay for the services government provides so the Republicans keep giving the wealthiest Americans a discount that means the rest of us pay a higher price for the services we all use, including the 1%. They are not even coming close to paying their fair share of the costs of living in this nation you unpatriotically keep economically destroying with unprincipaled economic policies, that rob most Americans of the very opportunity to succeed our nation has guaranteed to all Americans.
Not only does government provide necessary services we all want like the national parks, but they do so much more efficiently than private enterprise. That is the laughable lie as the Republicans claim we need to privatize the public school system to provide competition and thus lower the costs.
The problem with this theory is that it is backwards. In many instances it is the public schools or the public option that would provide the competition to a more expensive private system that is a monopoly, that would leave millions of children without an education the way the private health care system has left over fifty million without care. There is no Capitalism without the government in some instances, no matter what lie Republicans try to spin.
The Republicans demand we get government out of the way of business and deregulate so companies would be more successful. Would anyone dare to argue that we needed to deregulate laws criminalizing theft and fraud to enable we the people to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Yet this is what Republicans incessantly argue we need to do, make fraud, deceptive practices, and theft legal, for business to succeed. The corporate criminal code was put there because business has engaged in practices that needed to be criminalized just ask anyone defrauded out of their homes by some of the lending practices of the banking industry.
Then there is the whole argument over what Republicans call Entitlements, speaking the word with dripping sarcasm. If we had full employment and people were paid a just and fair wage there would be no entitlements. The problem is that Republicans insist on policies that hold down inflation by intentionally leaving those who show up to work without a job to show up to.
If you are going to deny a person who shows up the work a job so you can exploit his desperation to survive as a means of holding everyone's wages down, you have somewhat of a moral obligation to feed them since your policies intentionally deny them work. Thus we have food stamps, unemployment, housing subsidies, and other protections for those denied the right of full participation in our society because the rest of us understand morality and our immoral system, even as Republicans don't.
Most of you Republicans don't even really understand the Founding Fathers you pretend you revere so much even as you make up the history as you go along. Our Founders weren't fighting to end government, they were fighting to be part of the governing process. They knew what you Republcians fail to grasp and that is that anarchy is not freedom. Locke and Sydney knew you only had freedom with law and government. Anarchy is what all of us dreamed of until we grew up and knew better.
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