THREE
Posted on: February 11, 2019 at 12:05:14 CT
90Tiger STL
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Three
The government is us; we are the government, you and I.
Another so-called “progressive,” Theodore Roosevelt, spoke those words in 1902. Plenty of other people have said something similar, often as a way of endorsing representative government over, say, a dictatorship. It may sound innocuous, but it’s actually insidious.
One of the first things I ever read by the late Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard was a convincing refutation of this collectivist canard. Rothbard argued that government is a collection of individuals who, by virtue of the monopoly of legal power they possess, exert influence and control over other people. Some people consent to it; others do not. But let’s not make the mistake of assuming that just because we can elect our politicians, everything they subsequently do is “voluntary” on our part or that we’re all doing it to each other.
In the mind of a power-thirsty politician, “the government is us” mentality is a license to justify all sorts of mischief.
If you were drafted by the government and sent to Vietnam, you probably didn’t think you were the one doing the sending.
If a Martian landed in your backyard and declared, “Take me to your government,” you wouldn’t reply, “Oh, well here I am. What can I do for you?” More likely, you’d send him to Capitol Hill or the White House.
In the mind of a power-thirsty politician, “the government is us” mentality is a license to justify all sorts of mischief. In the mind of an obsequious citizen, it’s an excuse to acquiesce to whatever that politician wants to do to him.