A good friend of mine over on Facebook posted this today and I thought in the age of Obama and his drive toward a collectivist oligarchy, this is as an appropriate question as any. What follows is a post by one of his friends which together paint an awfully bleak picture of our current government. Thanks Dion.......
What is the function of the United States government? Not its purpose as set forth in our founding documents, but the function it actually performs today. When pondering such questions, I always follow the money. In other words, I look at the budget. In my opinion, the function of the United States government is to redistribute wealth from productive citizens to a recipient class comprising certain protected categories of persons and those not working, as evidenced by the two-thirds of the budget that is allocated to wealth transfers. This includes wealth created by fiat, which comprises over 40% of the budget, because productive citizens must ultimately bear the inflationary costs of such policies. What do you think the function is of our government?
This is the comment by Dion's friend Adi.....
Dion, you have nailed what the function IS. I hereby post what the function of the
government SHOULD be, with attribution to Milton Friedman
.
"Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the
nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from
crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good
intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the
cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a
referee, not an active player."
Exit question: how many democrat voters have ever in their lifetimes asked, "What is the legitimate purpose and function of government, and how far has our current government deviated from that.?
Thanks guys.
7 comments:
"Exit question: how many [...] voters, DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN, have ever in their lifetimes asked, "What is the legitimate purpose and function of government, and how far has our current government deviated from that.?"
Well, let's be honest Isaac, at least republican voters have a clue about what government's supposed to do. Democrats are utterly and intentionally clueless.
I will grant you though, that garden-variety GOP voters also don't really see the difference between how our government was designed to operate and how far it's deviated from that.
I mean W expanded the role and scope of government to the cheers of neo-cons like Karl Rove and others.....how "conservative" is that? Not very.
So I guess one could argue that it's worse for republicans to cheer the expansion of the imperial State because they know better, while democrats are simply too stupid to know why what they're doing is wrong.
Ed, you seem like a nice enough guy. I am reasonably certain that you don't beat your wife or kick your dog.
Having said that, I believe you are awfully naïve politically.
The people who run this country are not elected. You have never seen their names on a ballot and you never will.
They use the terms liberal and conservative to keep us bickering among ourselves but they don't care who gets elected. Whether liberal or conservative, whomever is elected is obliged to do their bidding on the issues that matter to them.
And every issue that matters to them involves - at some point and in some way - the ramming of a red-hot poker up our collective ass.
Isaac, you're preaching to the choir my friend. I've posted numerous times, though it's been a while and I don't feel like plowing through the archives to find an example, about the bankers, international financiers, politicians, CEO's and such who actually operate super-Constitutionally to orchestrate the economy and to a certain extent, world events, so that the outcome is of financial benefit to them, regardless of what party is in "power".
US elections are merely window dressing intended to keep the dumb voters believing that we have some sort of say in our lives.....we do not. The same people remain in power election after election and their names are mostly unknown to us.
By arguing about liberals and conservatives, I wasn't stating that one group has more understanding about reality than another, just that one group tends to understand, at lest on paper, how things are supposed to be, even though they are as complicit in the downfall and failure of the Constitutional system as anybody.
To wrap it up, I think we pretty much agree that we live in sort of a delusional Matrix kind of imaginary world and we know not who pulls the master strings.
O.K. Let's stipulate that you and I agree on the subject of a shadow government.
I respectfully submit, then, that your liberal vs. conservative posts feed into their agenda. Those behind the curtain want us to fight each other. As long as we are fighting each other, we aren't fighting them.
Let's stop giving them what they want - interparty bickering that, in the end, does nothing to loosen their hold on the levers of power.
I couldn't agree with you more, on a global level. But there are agenda items in government that do have day-to-day lifestyle effects on us, and I think that depending on your political leanings, you view those agendas as good or bad.
Still though, the big picture is what is really scary and I resent that it's hidden from us like on an episode of The X-Files or something.
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