Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:31 PM | August 27, 2023

The biggest problem with government is that it has too much power.

Sure, we can identify a million specific things government does well or, more likely, poorly. But we would be infinitely better off if it just did fewer things and had less power over our lives.

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There are a ton of reasons why that is true, but the most important one is quite simple: a primary reason why Americans are at each others’ throats is that we disagree so vehemently about what government should do and to whom. If it did less we would have less to fight about.

If you haven’t noticed, Americans are pretty angry at each other, and a lot of that anger is driven by the fact that when one side or the other loses a political battle they wind up subsidizing a government bureaucracy and program that as often as not is used to impose something on them.

Some of this conflict is inevitable. There is no hard and fast rule about what governments should do, and it’s hard to imagine that we could all agree on an inviolable limit. Things were a lot easier when the United States population was a tenth of its current size, its military didn’t include nuclear weapons, and commerce didn’t require national and international standards. A modern economy requires standardization unimaginable a century or three ago.

On the other hand, not everything has to be regulated to the point tof uniformity. Much of what we are arguing about is values, not trucking regulations.

Urban elites shouldn’t be in a position to impose their values on everybody else, and everybody else shouldn’t have that power over urban elites. If San Franciscans want to live in a drug-infested city with streets covered in poop, have at it. Try that in a small town, though…

The answer to the question “Why can’t we all get along?” is pretty simple: nobody is willing to leave others alone.

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The culture war wouldn’t disappear entirely if the advocates of alphabet ideology stuck to their knitting and practiced their idiosyncratic lifestyles quietly, but 80% of it would. If there weren’t pornography in the schools, propaganda being pushed at us constantly, and displays of sado-masochism in our streets social conservatives wouldn’t be on a warpath.

If you are a man who wants to wear a dress nobody really cares that much. Come for the kids and we have a war. Put the full force of government behind the effort to come for the kids and you have the makings of a battle royale. Write a hate speech law requiring everybody to bow down to you and it shouldn’t surprise that those people wind up hating your guts.

The fact that federal judges can force states to make transing the kids a mandatory practice is insane, and a prime example of government overreach. Federalism exists to prevent just this sort of thing. If Californians want to promote insanity we can argue about the wisdom; federal judges inventing a constitutional right to put pornography in the schools and require parents to medically “affirm” their child’s gender is a recipe for mutual hatred.

Forcing people to act against their deeply-held values earns you ever drop of anger hurled at you.

One basic problem we have is that there is always a temptation for one side or the other to overreach and impose its view on the other; as a practical matter this is usually the Left trying to impose its views on the right, because the Left is more inclined to use government power. It is the first, second, and third option they reach for.

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Usually the reaction of conservatives to things with which they disagree is grumbling, not legal action. Leftists try to make even the grumbling illegal. Is it any wonder we are angry?

Way back in the dark ages of the late 20th-century Grover Norquist proposed a “Leave Us Alone” coalition–conservatives of every strip banding together with the sole purpose of just getting the government off our back. Great idea, right?

Prior to 9/11 it looked like George W Bush might have been an ally in pushing this vision. After 9/11 he created a surveillance state that was far more powerful than anything seen in the West.

And here we are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From America’s most trusted news source:

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Smiles from around the web

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And finally, some Trump humor

 

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