Tea Partiers Fight Culture of Dependence
Apr 19
Democracy and Power 101: Government is power
Government, in its last analysis, is organized force. – Woodrow Wilson
Government within its jurisdiction has a monopoly on power. Government has the power to tax and enforce the collection of taxes, the power to regulate, the power to incarcerate and even take the life of a person. Every act of government has an element of power, which is executed by force or coercion. Every government rule and regulation involves compliance with the power of government. For example, public education is overwhelmingly accepted as a public good. However, all aspects of public education are enforced by the power of government: taxation, compulsory attendance, jurisdiction, and curriculum.
Tea Partiers Fight Culture of Dependence
Many Americans are gravely concerned with the increasing power of government. Michael Barone aptly writes about the struggle between ordinary Americans and the increasing power of government, which is steadily eroding personal freedom. “Do you realize,” CNN’s Susan Roesgen asked a man at the April 15, 2009, tea party in Chicago, “that you’re eligible for a $400 credit?” When the man refused to drop his “drop socialism” sign, she went on, “Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets 50 billion out of the stimulus?” Roesgen is no longer with CNN, and CNN has only about half as many viewers as it did last year. But her questions are revealing. They help us understand that the issue on which our politics has become centered — the Obama Democrats’ vast expansion of the size and scope of government — is really not just about economics. It is really a battle about culture, a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence.
It is more than cultural. It is about personal freedom. When government grows, taxes must increase. An increase in taxes decreases personal freedom. A portion of the person’s possessions has been confiscated, depriving that person of the power to use their possessions as they wish. Even if the tax pays for a benefit for all Americans, such as national defense, personal freedom to an individual American is diminished.
Ah, “but your individual would lose all of his freedoms.” Most likely true. This is the great conundrum of modern democracy. How do you restrain the abuse of power by government? James Madison recognized the proclivity for abuse: The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
Barone observes the rational by of the politically powerful: The Obama Democrats see a society in which ordinary people cannot fend for themselves, where they need to have their incomes supplemented, their health care insurance regulated and guaranteed, their relationships with their employers governed by union leaders. Highly educated mandarins can make better decisions for them than they can make themselves. That is the culture of dependence.
This is the progressive philosophy that has enlarged government in the 20th and 21st Centuries. The great issue of our time is how to restore individual freedom. Barone appreciates the philosophy of freedom and wrote: The tea party movement reminds us of what the Founders taught — that it has a moral dimension, as well. They risked all in the cause of the culture of independence. The polling evidence suggests that most Americans don’t want to leave that behind.
Hail to the Tea Partiers and advocates of personal freedom. Read more in Democracy and Power, and particularly Personal Freedom and Power IX: Limiting Governance.
