Much has been made in this election cycle of the “too much government” argument from voters who believe we are over-regulated at every level. This past week underscores the need for government to intervene in our lives. The nation’s health care system was mobilized this week after doctors, starting with an alert Vanderbilt physician, reported mysterious illnesses that have now been determined to be a rare outbreak of fungal meningitis. It’s made more than two dozen people sick in nine states, killing several. It was a government agency that connected the dots. It was a government agency that already had cited a Massachusetts specialty pharmacy that produced the medicine for regulatory violations. That pharmacy has now surrendered its license.
October 11, 2012
maybe not too much . . .
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An excellent point, and one not made nearly often enough.
ReplyDeletePeople who espouse "less government" and "lower taxes" (typically, but not exclusively, poppycock libertarian themes) are ignoring, willfully or not, the many necessary and useful functions and services provided by government. What most of them are really saying is that they want government to stop telling them what to do or what not to do, but to keep right on (or even increase) telling others what or what not to do. One of my fondest hopes is that such people will someday show the courage of their convictions, join with others similarly convicted, secede from whatever polity they are a part of, and begin paying for those services once provided by their former governments out of their own pockets, on the "private market," or begin providing the services themselves, on their own, and leave the rest of us alone. I feel certain it would not take very long for them to change their tune.
(Before someone accuses me of contradicting one or another tenet of anarchism by espousing this view, put this into your pipe and smoke it: Anyone, anarchist or otherwise, who does not recognize either the necessity or the usefulness of some kind of government - at least for groups larger than a typical extended family - is deeply and hopelessly delusional, and accordingly to be excused from participating in serious political discussion, at least until the psychosis subsides.)
Our current Secretary of State once suggested that it takes a village to raise a child.
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