THE GOVERNMENT WE'RE STUCK WITH
by Joe Sobran

April 12, 2005

[Originally published by the Universal Press Syndicate, 
January 28, 1997]

     Are you trapped in an abusive relationship with your 
government? Does it do all the taking and none of the 
giving? Has it become increasingly demanding and 
dependent? Does it refuse to admit being at fault? Does 
it always insist on being the dominant partner, while 
refusing to accept its own responsibilities? Does it run 
up huge bills and stick you with the payments? Is it 
secretive and evasive about its activities, while denying 
you your own space and privacy? Does it demand your 
undivided love, while remaining emotionally distant from 
you and indifferent to your basic needs?

     If you answered yes to all these questions, you have 
a problem. In fact, you have the same problem every 
American taxpayer has.

     What's more, there's no solution. If you had a 
spouse that behaved like your government, you could not 
only break free of the relationship, you might be able to 
collect damages or even have the offender jailed, or at 
least ordered to stay away from you. But the cost and 
inconvenience of divorcing your government is 
prohibitive. You have to leave your home, move far away, 
and start a completely new life.

     For many people, the problem is aggravated by denial 
-- the need to pretend that everything is all right 
because many other governments are even worse. They feel 
guilty if they criticize their own government, which 
constantly tells them how lucky they are not to be living 
elsewhere. It's as if an alcoholic, adulterous 
wife-beater were to keep reminding his wife that she's 
fortunate he's not O.J. Simpson.

     The modern state stands ready to release you from 
all your duties to your own family, while constantly 
increasing your political obligations. You can divorce 
your spouse, neglect your parents, abandon or abort your 
children. But you'd better pay your taxes, most of which 
will be spent for the benefit of people you've never met 
and have never agreed to support.

     This system of forcing some to pay others' way is 
justified as "compassion," but it's an inversion of the 
natural order of love, the family-centered affections 
that modern liberalism despises as narrow and selfish. 
It's typical of the champions of the all-absorbing state 
that even as they treat the family as something a child 
must be protected from, they try to clothe the state 
itself in the warm metaphors of "family," "community," 
and "village."

     Our public discussion seems to assume that it's the 
destiny of the state to keep getting bigger, without 
limit. We are told that we're not being governed unless 
Congress is continually passing new laws. But this 
confuses governing with legislating. We have more than 
enough laws, while the most basic ones are being enforced 
less and less. The disparity between the number of laws 
on the books and the will to punish violent crime ought 
to tell us something, but it doesn't seem to. We complain 
about "partisan bickering" and "gridlock" and demand that 
Congress get back to passing more laws, any laws.

     The current Clinton-Gingrich scandals have almost 
nothing to do with the central problem: defining the 
proper role of government. Neither party has anything 
worth calling a philosophy; both talk vaguely about 
reducing government's size without specifying its nature, 
purpose, and limits. But it's obtuse to discuss political 
questions exclusively in terms of quantity, in an inane 
dialectic of empty uplift and equally empty cynicism.

     In reality, both parties seem to feel we're stuck 
with the kind of government we have. It's instructive to 
contrast their vacuous debates with the real debates this 
country witnessed before the Civil War. Not only was the 
rhetoric grander; the substance was solid. From Jefferson 
and Hamilton to Lincoln and Douglas, people argued about 
the principles of government, on the assumption that they 
could still shape their destiny.

     We can't assume that anymore. A sense of dull doom 
hangs over our politics, as if the fateful decisions have 
already been made for us, and all that's left is a little 
wiggle room. The awful part is the suspicion that we may 
be getting the kind of government we deserve.

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