The Anti-Empire Report
The Teaparty folks never tire of calling for “smaller government”. How sweet. Most other Republicans repeat the same mantra ad nauseam as well, as do many liberals (not to be confused with progressives). So for all these individuals I have some questions:
- When there’s a plane crash the government sends investigators to the crash site to try to determine the cause of the accident; this is information that can be used to make air travel safer. But it’s really BIG GOVERNMENT, forcing the airlines to fully cooperate, provide all relevant information, secrecy is not permitted, and make changes or face severe penalties. Do you think the government should stop doing this?
- Following this year’s BP oil spill do you think the government was right to bully and threaten the company for an explanation and solution for the catastrophe, or should it have been “hands off” for the sake of small government?
- Following a major earthquake there’s usually a cry from many quarters: Stores should not be raising prices for basic necessities like water, generators, batteries, tree-removal services, diapers, etc. More grievances soon arise because landlords raise rents on vacant apartments after many dwellings in the city have been rendered uninhabitable. How dare they do that? people wail. Following the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles the California Assembly proceeded to make it a crime for merchants to increase prices for vital goods and services by more than ten percent after a natural disaster.[1] Following the destruction caused by Hurricane Isabel in September 2003, the governor and attorney general of Virginia called on the legislature to pass the state’s first anti-price-gouging law after receiving about 100 complaints from residents. North Carolina had enacted an anti-gouging law just shortly before.[2] Does such blatant big-government interference in our God-given Supply-and-Demand system bother you? Do you think that our legislators should simply allow “the magic of the marketplace” to do its magic?
- Do you think that the government should continue waging war against what they call “terrorists” abroad, since there’s no bigger or more expensive big-government action than this?
- Do you think the government should continue with its electronic strip searches and body feel-ups at airports or should we allow the risk of bombs being brought on board airplanes? (Or — as an alternative to either — do you think the government should cease its bombing, invading, occupying, overthrowing, killing and torturing around the world so as to put an end to its creating anti-American terrorists?)
- If your bank fails — and hundreds have done so in recent years — are you willing to accept the loss of your life’s savings? Or are you thankful that big, big government steps in, takes over the bank, and protects every penny of your savings?
- Do you think that big government — federal, state or local — should stop haranguing the citizenry about the environment: recycling, air pollution, water pollution, soil runoff, etc., etc., or that people should simply be allowed to do what is most convenient for them, their families, and their businesses?
- Do you think that manufacturers should have the right to run their factories à la a sweatshop in a Bangkok alley 50 years ago or that big government should throw its weight around to assure modern working conditions, with worker health and safety standards?
- When a prescription drug starts to kill or harm more and more people, who should decide when to pull it off the market: Big Government or the drug’s manufacturer?
- Are you glad that food packages list the details of ingredients and nutrition? Who do you think is responsible for that?
- A huge number of Americans would be facing serious hunger if not for their food stamps; more than 40 million receive them. Where do you think food stamps come from? No, not from Sarah Palin.
- And where, pray tell, do you think unemployment insurance, housing subsidies, and Medicare come from? (There were of course, lord help us, the Teaparty signs: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,”[3] while simultaneously ridiculing Obama’s push for “socialized medicine”.) Some of you would probably rather see widespread hunger, poverty, homelessness, and illness in America than have people dependent upon the BigGovernmentMonster.
- Do you think that big government is no match for the private sector in efficiently getting large and important projects done? Big government in the United States has created great dams, marvelous national parks, an interstate highway system, the peace corps, social security, the National Institutes of Health, and the Smithsonian Institution; it’s also landed men on the moon, wiped out polio, and built up an incredible military machine (ignoring for the moment what it’s used for), and much more.
- Do you know that twice in recent years the federal government undertook major studies of many thousands of federal jobs to determine whether they could be done more efficiently by private contractors? On one occasion the federal employees won more than 80% of the time; on the other occasion 91%. Both studies took place under the Bush administration, which was hoping for different results.[4]
We have to remind the American people of what they once knew but seem to have forgotten: that they don’t want BIG government, or SMALL government; they don’t want MORE government, or LESS government; they want government ON THEIR SIDE.
I think the Teapartyers are motivated primarily by two factors: 1) they don’t have the intellectual competence or ideological independence to place the blame for the sick economy where it belongs: the recklessness and greed of Wall Street, the banks, and other financial corporations; and so they blame the president and his “socialist” policies; 2) the president is black.
Mark Brzezinski, son of Zbigniew, was a post-Cold War Fulbright Scholar in Poland: “I asked my students to define democracy. Expecting a discussion on individual liberties and authentically elected institutions, I was surprised to hear my students respond that to them, democracy means a government obligation to maintain a certain standard of living and to provide health care, education and housing for all. In other words, socialism.”[5]
__________
[1] Los Angeles Times, January 2, 1995
[2] Washington Post, September 24, 2003
[3] New York Times, November 3, 2010
[4] Washington Post, June 8, 2005 and March 23, 2006
[5] Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1994
Blame it all on the Tea Party. What part of America is broke do you not understand?
Every tax hike imagined will not solve our anchor so neatly secured around our cute little necks.
See you in the bread line! Comrade.
On a summer day in the month of May a burly bum came hiking
Down a shady lane through the sugar cane, he was looking for his liking.
As he roamed along he sang a song of the land of milk and honey
Where a bum can stay for many a day, and he won’t need any money
Oh the buzzin’ of the bees in the cigarette trees near the soda water fountain,
At the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings on the Big Rock Candy Mountains
There’s a lake of gin we can both jump in, and the handouts grow on bushes
In the new-mown hay we can sleep all day, and the bars all have free lunches
Where the mail train stops and there ain’t no cops, and the folks are tender-hearted
Where you never change your socks and you never throw rocks,
And your hair is never parted
Oh the buzzin’ of the bees in the cigarette trees near the soda water fountain,
At the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings on the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Oh, a farmer and his son, they were on the run, to the hay field they were bounding
Said the bum to the son, “Why don’t you come to the big rock candy mountains?”
So the very next day they hiked away, the mileposts they were counting
But they never arrived at the lemonade tide, on the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Oh the buzzin’ of the bees in the cigarette trees near the soda water fountain,
At the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings on the Big Rock Candy Mountains
One evening as the sun went down and the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking, and he said “Boys, I’m not turning.”
“I’m heading for a land that’s far away beside the crystal fountains;”
“So come with me, we’ll go and see the Big Rock Candy Mountains.”
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, there’s a land that’s fair and bright,
The handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars all are empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarete trees,
The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmer’s trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay
Oh I’m bound to go where there ain’t no snow
Where the rain don’t fall, the wind don’t blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, you never change your socks
And little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There’s a lake of stew and of whiskey too
And you can paddle all around ’em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin,
And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in
There ain’t no short-handled shovels, no axes, saws or picks,
I’m a-goin’ to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
I’ll see you all this comin’ fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains!
It is not just “smaller government.” It is appropriate government.
– Yes, the government should fight wars – even the war on terror.
– yes, it is appropriate to help with natural disasters (although this may be more a state issue than a fed).
– yes, the government should investigate plane crashes.
– yes, they should regulate pollution (what one company does will greatly affect others).
– no, TSA is just lucky that no one has blown up a plane. The shoe bomber, the underwear bomber both got past security, people on board stopped them. Read yesterday that 60% of the bomb making materials sent through O’hare to test TSA … got through.
– As for the safety net (food stamps, housing subsidies, medicaid…) There must be a better way. These programs sound great, but many beneficiaries become dependent upon them – When people help people, the giver does so joyfully and the recipient is grateful and motivated. When the government does it, the “giver” feels robbed, and the recipient feels entitled. Both are demotivated.
According to the US constitution the federal government is responsible for national defense, and interstate commerce. All other things should be left to the state. We are a long way from that not… we need to slowly move back towards it.
Yes, I am a Tea Party supporter.
Try talking to us, you might learn something.
I’ve always thought that anti-government conservatives and the Tea Party are just another an American version of European anarchists.
You go on websites and lists of European anarchists and see some of the same messages: Government is bad, government impedes freedom, government is the enemy….bla, bla, bla
When in doubt, let’s resort to the standby position of injecting racism. We are now ringing up trillion dollar annual deficits with no let up in sight. DId big government have anything to do with this?? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We have arrived Mr Blum.
I find the polish students’ definition of democracy interesting. The ancient greeks permitted educated men to participate and debate in an open forum to create well thought out laws. Modern America permits every idiot to vote for one of two brands of government – effectively randomly placing our choice of coke or pepsi in gerrymandered markets across the country.
The Tea party was a great thing . . . for the first few weeks. Then it was hijacked by the right wing. The Tea party claims that it is “anti-government” then, of course, wants to control government. Echos of ‘Animal Farm’ are creeping into our society.
Our country’s biggest problem is that we lump every issue into a left-right continum, and we permit the two parties, our two brands, to stop competition of ideas by demanding that our senators and representatives vote in lock step. Parties should be prohibited from influencing elected officials voting against their conscience – just as it is illegal to bribe a politician with money.
Too frequently we identify a speaker as a leftist or a fascist and discount what he or she says. While we may disagree on many things, can’t we at least agree on procedure?
I wish that intellectuals of both poliltical persuasions could honestly work together, and make our country a better place to live in, rather than our politics be as it is – a bunch of idiots making sound bites – because that is how our pathetic democracy works. Unlike Athens, we can’t respect each other enough to listen and vote with reason.
So, like the Polish democracy (I am Polish by the way), we will continue to grab at the steering wheel until our ‘car’ crashes into a tree. But we will all be convinced that it is the other guy’s (party’s) fault.