- We just need to go back to limited government…
- What exactly is limited government?…
- Can you imagine stock market wins 138 times bigger than Nvidia? If you’re like most people, probably not. But then again, most people haven’t seen this report.
Dear Reader,
A recent editorial of The Wall Street Journal implored the Republican Party to reembrace what it labels limited government.
From which:
- Governmental control, once the province of progressive Democrats, is the hallmark of MAGA Republicans. They impose high tariffs and propose government ownership stakes in corporations. And no administration should direct what universities can teach, where law firms can practice, or whom comedians can mock.
Just so. And I take no exception to the torts here listed.
Yet today the term “limited government” — I wedge the term between quotation marks for a reason — harbors no more substance than ether, than gossamer, than the spinal column of a United States congressman.
That is, limited government lacks all practical meaning.
Government limited to what, precisely? How does one even define limited government in this, the 21st century?
Its drummers rarely hazard a satisfactory answer — or even an unsatisfactory answer.
They hazard little answer at all.
Clear as Mud
Perhaps limited government can be likened to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 definition of pornography — a fellow knows it when he sees it.
Some see limited government when the top marginal tax rate hovers at 36% instead of 39%.
Others see limited government when federal spending is limited to 20% of the gross domestic product — as opposed to 24%.
Yet let us adopt a more objective criterion. Let us examine government spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product.
The United States government devours some 36% of the gross domestic product.
The communist government of China — meantime — devours 33% of the gross domestic product.
Thus the “limited government” of the United States is more expansive than China’s “communist” government.
How do you like it?
What about Mr. Putin’s totalitarian hell, Russia?
Russia’s governmental proportion equals precisely the United States’ governmental proportion — 36% of the gross domestic product.
If the United States government is limited, then the Russian government is likewise limited.
The free and democratic nation of Ukraine… meantime… which the United States arms against Russian barbarity… features a government that commands 66% of the gross domestic product.
Limited Government Is a Shifting Line in the Sand
“Limited government” is essentially a line drawn in the shifting sand. It is erased and redrawn as circumstances demand.
During the 1930s critics of the New Deal sobbed about the eclipse of limited government in America. They were heavily validated.
The ensuing Second World War did not, shall I say, limit government. The intrusive national security state blossomed during the 1950s.
And as the conservative, limited government evangelist William F. Buckley declared in 1952:
- We have got to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.
How limited government can parade alongside a “totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores” is somewhat dark to me.
Meantime, the Great Society followed in the 1960s. And civil rights legislation effectively opened all private enterprise to Uncle Samuel’s prying gaze.
To talk of limited government after that point — of truly limited government — was to talk of unicorns, great white whales and airborne pigs.
Yet even now, many croon about our wondrous system of limited government and how it is presently under menace.
And I hazard they will thunder about imminent threats to limited government ahead of every future election.
Hence the elections of 2028, 2044, 2076 and 2188 will prove “the most important of our lifetime.”
No One Connects Emotionally to Limited Government
“Limited government” fails to go home. It lodges nowhere near the heart.
The term itself is duller than dishwater. It inspires as an Alan Greenspan lecture on accounting practices inspires.
It excites as elevator music excites.
We hear it and offer polite applause. We nod our heads dutifully… then fall asleep.
There were two great orators of antiquity, the Roman Cicero and the Greek Demosthenes.
When Cicero spoke the people said, “What a great speech.” When Demosthenes spoke, the people said, “Let us march.”
No one marches for limited government.
They will march for “Health Care for All,” “Save the Planet” or “Social Justice Now.”
These are cries of the heart that awaken the blood. They bubble the hormones. They inspire us to run off and enlist.
Limited government inspires us to… author newspaper editorial columns and watch grass grow.
The Cardinal Sin of Limited Government
And so we arrive at the cardinal sin of “limited government.”
It is defensive by orientation.
Buglers for aggressive government are always on about some crisis to be scotched through energetic intervention — be it the environment, health care, housing, race, income inequality, bedbug infestation — A through Z, you name it.
Such individuals are commonly perceived as the angels on our collective shoulder. Thus they find themselves uniquely positioned atop the commanding moral heights.
“How can you just sit back and do nothing while there’s so much suffering going on?,” they pule.
“People need help. Government must ACT!”
Who wants to be accused of stark indifference to a suffering humanity? Certainly no one seeking higher office.
And so limited government types fall perpetually upon the back foot.
They perpetually cede the terms of battle to their opponents. They are too fearful to say no.
And so you have a nation guttering beneath $38 trillion of debt because no one has said no.
Don’t Look to the Constitution
Meantime, limited government types like to yell about the Constitution and its charter of limited government.
If only we could embrace the Constitution as written, they argue, the Elysium of limited government can be ours.
Yet as the 19th century libertarian Lysander Spooner argued, with devastation:
- Whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it…
Let us hear, then, no more talk of limited government.
It simply does not exist. And it likely never will.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
