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June 23, 2007
A Thought for Better Government
By Jack Lee
It's been a fundamental belief of mine for many years that in order to have an optimal government (of the people and for the people) we need to adhere to a very simply formula and it goes something like this:
Fewer taxes lead to a smaller government and that equals more freedom. In other words, less equals more!
That’s basically the whole thing. It's not very complicated is it?
For me, it's a matter of restraining government from it's addiction to spend us into bankruptcy and then hold them back from passing all sorts of laws to cover everything from A to Z. Obviously, throwing vast sums of money at projects is wasteful if it's not spent wisely (look at public education in Ca). We just can't cover everything with a law, nor should we. Too often we punish the many for the bad acts of the few, i.e. assault weapons law and the infringement on the 2nd Ammendment. Too many laws is a sign of a society in collapse.
So, government ought to focus on what is it's prime responsibility, as set forth in the U.S. Constitution, and to a lesser emphasis in our State Constitution and let the free market, innovation, entrepenuers, creativity and democracy flourish, as they were intended.
If you want to reduce this to an even simpler format (or floormat as my former boss used to say), it means government should only do what the people can't do for themselves. And there's not too much the private sector can't do better and for less money than government.
As a conservative, I respect the rights of the individual to live as free they see fit. It's only when their freedoms interferes with my freedoms or yours, do I set a boundary.
That’s pretty much my whole philosophy on freedom and good government.
What do you think?
Posted by Post Scripts at June 23, 2007 06:24 PM
Comments
I'm all for lower taxes, so I'm in! The big challenge is how to get our legislators to cut those taxes, cut spending and cut programs. Creating Constitutionally inspired smaller government today would require a dismanteling process of spectacular proportions. We can keep the pressure on but the big job, selling the program to Americans so that dismaneling would be supported, wow...we have really set ourselves a task!
This calls for out of the box thinking...perhaps some of our fellow citizens could be challenged to consider new ways of accomplishing things like education (homeschooling is one idea)instead of the model that is no longer working well.
For now at least we can accept that change won't happen anytime soon AND we can focus our energies on working toward smaller government...we might even make enough progress to stave off economic and social collapse. LOL
Posted by: Tina at June 26, 2007 09:21 AM
One of my favorite bumper stickers reads
“I believe in Freedom, what do YOU believe in?”
You are right on Jack with your belief that more and more government is giving us less and less freedom. And, ironically, they are taxing away more and more of our hard earned money to do this to us.
You’re proposing that we should have a very limited government, just like the Constitution says. Some people say that’s just too simplistic, things are much too complicated these days. Could it be that so many things are so complicated now BECAUSE of all the government laws, regulations, bureaucracies, etc. etc.? A lot of times, there are very effect simple solutions. It’s been proven over and over that, even for more complex solutions, the free market is much better, cheaper and faster. We’ve see so many examples today where our government decides something is a problem that they need to solve. Then the laws and regulations they come up with grow and grow in complexity and costliness. Usually they have unintended consequences. Many times these consequences actually make the problem worse rather than solving it. (Remember how our welfare system resulted in more poor, dependant families instead of “reducing poverty”, or the people at Tahoe right now whose homes have burned after the government wouldn’t let them clear away fire hazards).
I believe in Freedom, what do YOU believe in? I hope it’s not ”I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
Posted by: Mike at June 26, 2007 01:59 PM