by Stanley W. Shura

Created on: March 01, 2009   Last Updated: June 26, 2009

"Well, what do they think a stimulus package is?!"...President Obama in response to republican arguments that the stimulus bill is nothing but a spending bill.

What is government? What is its role? Who decides? Who funds the government? What makes a group of people a community, or society, or country? The answers to these qeustions seem quite subjective and surely involve criteria that shift from time to time and place to place and even person to person. As for the latter, what makes a country, part of that answer is government. Some folks maintain that government should do as little as possible - get out of our way. But, what are "we the people" the people *of*, if we do not provide for the infrastructure and personnel that is supposed to protect us and serve us?

It seems a popular notion among those who purport to love freedom, or, rather ironically or perhaps just very poignantly, those who have the freedom to actually express their views on the subject, that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible. I understand the temptation to embrace an ideal that says "I can do for myself, thank you! I do not need big brother to coddle me OR control me!".

Well, in the interest of full-disclosure, I now confess that I find rather distasteful this expression or sentiiment that folks who subscribe to one philosophy "love freedom" and those who subscribe to another would rather have "big government" tell everybody what to do. Both descriptions serve the purpose of sending a message promoting the former over the latter. The first description is a rather implicit and disingenuous tactic designed to suggest the "badness" of the second. And the second description just puts it right out there in a rather manic and wildly strident bravado so bold in its spite as to render it almost more dignified to respond with silence and quiet dignity.

The problem that arises, however, when we are bullied into submitting to that logically fallacious notion that "sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you" and falling therefore in-line by conforming to some allegedly "adult" non-response of "letting it go". There is nothing "adult" about submitting to an idealogy that does not work. And for too long, certain politicians and those citizens who seem convinced of their and their leaders' wisdom, have tried to say on one side of their mouths that we are a society of laws and that the greater good is fostered when we all come together,

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>