A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. – Barry Goldwater
I will never cease to be amazed at the inability of statists to recognize that the expansion of government will never stop until it is somehow forced to. Every year the American governmental machine adds new employees, new “mandates”, hundreds of new laws and thousands of new regulations (all with the force of law and most with criminal penalties). Government now consumes approximately 40% of the gross domestic product, and given that any decreases have been both minor and short-lived there is little reason to believe it will not exceed half within the lifetimes of most of y’all reading this. Meanwhile, the scope of government reach has also increased, though at a much higher rate; modern governments interfere in their citizens’ lives to a vastly greater extent than at any time in history, and in some countries (the US especially) this is more or less a one-way ratchet because only a miniscule fraction of laws enacted, no matter how odious or tyrannical, are ever repealed. Once a legal precedent is established it provides a base for still more laws, and so the mound continues to grow year after year, getting taller and wider until some irresistible force levels it or (more likely) it collapses of its own weight. Early last month, an article by A. Barton Hinkle described it this way:
…Call it the auctioneer effect. Having approved a new law or program to address a circumstance in one year, politicians confront a dilemma in subsequent years…the problem does not disappear. It wouldn’t do to conclude that, since previous laws and programs have failed, perhaps the problem lies beyond government’s ability to solve. Answer: Write more laws and fund more programs! As in a genuine auction, the winner is the pol who can propose the most. You can see the auctioneer effect all over the place. You can see it in public education, where ever-increasing expenditures produce flat test scores, which are then met with calls for even more spending. You can see it in the war on poverty, which now boasts 126 separate means-tested programs at the federal level alone. You can see it in gun control, where “high-capacity” once referred to 20- or 30-round magazines but now applies…to those holding as few as eight. And you can really see it in the war on crime, in which politicians seek to out-Roy Bean one another by perpetually ratcheting down thresholds for offenses – and perpetually ratcheting up penalties for same…
Of course, those who believe in the magical power of government to perform virtually any task with meat cleavers, sledgehammers, steamrollers and guns don’t see this as a problem, but they forget that once a tool or weapon is added to the governmental arsenal there is absolutely nothing to stop others from using it for their own purposes:
…Because they cannot ban abortion outright, conservative politicians have tried to discourage it in heavy-handed and sometimes humiliating ways. Thirty-four states impose regulations specific to abortion providers; 35 require counseling, and 26 impose waiting periods. Eight…now require women seeking abortions to have an ultrasound. Last year [Virginia] lawmakers…drew national scorn by proposing…an invasive transvaginal ultrasound…then [last month]…the Indiana Senate approved a bill to require…transvaginal ultrasound…[and demand] that establishments dispensing pills such as RU-486 meet the same construction standards as those performing surgical abortions…
Texas saw that and raised the standards to those for an ambulatory surgical center, a move that will close 38 of the 44 clinics in the state. Then at the end of March, North Dakota raised that still further by requiring an abortionist to be a doctor with hospital admitting privileges; another measure passed at the same time banned abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected (possibly as early as six weeks, when many women are just beginning to realize that they’re pregnant). Of course, this is old hat for sex workers; countries where sex work is legal often try to pass so many ridiculous restrictions that it’s very difficult to actually work within the law, and the newest “sex trafficking” laws define “prostitution” and “coercion” so broadly, at least a third of the population could be charged with “trafficking” and threatened with decades in prison and lifelong “sex offender” registration. This isn’t a joke, y’all; it’s not a “fallacy”, or “alarmism”, or “anti-government propaganda”. This is real, and happening in every area of government. When you arm “your” politicians to give you the goodies you want and to oppress your enemies, you inevitably arm “their” politicians to give them the goodies they want and to oppress their enemies…and the only ones who win are the politicians.
Awesome column, Maggie! I love it when you get your “Thomas Paine” on!!
Well, these are the times that try men’s souls, after all. 😉
Mr. Goldwater doesn’t go far enough; a Government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to squash you like a bug without noticing.
I for the legality of Abortion. That said; Maggie, what should have been done about this Kermit Gosnell mess in PA? Naturally the anti-abortion people are screaming bloody murder. What I want to know from somebody is; why didn’t Planned Parenthood spot this and move heaven and earth to get him closed down? In simple self-defense, if for no other reason? Either the regulation of Abortion in PA lacks something crucial, or it simply wasn’t being enforced. This ghoul is going to hang around the neck of Pro-Choice for years. Somebody Pro-Choice should have seen it coming.
I think that he is in fact a ghoul and I think the lack of action against him had more to do with the lack of social status of his adult victims.
I also wonder if PA’s restrictions on abortion performance had a quasi-blackmarket effect on this? That is, did the regulatory apparatus delay women seeking an abortion long enough to make late term abortion their only option?
I don’t know if that was in fact the case but I can see such being employed by abortion opponents to accentuate the tragedy. That is, I can see these activists using procedural barriers to push the abortion window further along to better decry those who seek and those who perform such.
Pro-Choice here – but I gotta tell you that abortion is pretty abhorrent to me. I don’t think this had anything to do with the social status of the Gosnell victims.
It’s clear to me that Planned Parenthood is out to protect every kind of abortion up to the moment of birth – no matter how sadistic. And it’s clear to me that they are in favor of infanticide for viable children born as a result of a botched abortion.
Gloria Steinham once said … “If men could get pregnant – abortion would be a sacrament!”. Well, welcome to the brave new world – where it IS.
Important to point out that the Gosnell case was about murder, not abortion. Abhorrent though it is, I find the “I am pro-choice, but…” statements I’ve heard to be a bit odd, because 1. it was murder, not abortion, and 2. If you spend a nanosecond thinking about abortion in rational and realistic terms, it’s obvious that this sort of thing will (very rarely) happen. I’m sort of left feeling like my pro-choice friends thought abortion was all skipping, smiling women and flowers, which is disappointing. Like they actually might now be verging on a thought that goes something like “well if it were ILLEGAL that would never…” and we know where that goes.
I DO think that the Gosnell case is a very good look at what can happen when a society teaches respect for “authority” above all else though. When we’re supposed to swallow government moralising because they are “the authorities” and therefore must be “good”. Staff at the clinic killed babies with a scissors through the neck, apparently on no more than Gosnell’s say-so.
Whether the case is really about abortion, as opposed to murder, is going to be a matter of perceptions, and selling the idea that it ISN’T about abortion is going to be tough sledding. Your second point is well made, but what bugs me is the this mess wasn’t exposed by the Pro-Choice groups that, one would think, had a lot of contact with Gosnell through the referral process. Possibly I am totally misunderstanding what has happened, but if I was the local head of a Pro-Choice political group I would have checked what was going on, and then raised hell. If the bureaucracy wasn’t prepared to publicly do something, I would have gone to the newspapers, and if the Media wouldn’t run with the story I would have posted what I had seen on the ‘Net, making as much as I could of my connection to the Pro-Choice cause. That this slipped through doesn’t change my mind about abortion, but it makes me wonder just how venal and/or stupid the local Pro-Choice leadership is.
Should have said “legal abortion” there, sorry! Couldn’t agree more with the rest. The liberal media have shown themselves to be just as propagandist as Fox News has ever been in this regard.
Your last sentence hits a sore spot with me. NO news outlet is unbiased. It isn’t possible for any news outlet to be unbiased. Fox news should have said “You know what their bias is. Here’s ours” not “Fair and Balanced”.
It was about abortion. That’s what they did there. They didn’t make cars or yo-yo’s there. They made a profit … on a abortion there. They paid people’s salaries … with profits from abortions.
Also – the arguement that “this horrendous act will happen very rarely in abortion” … why is that accepted when … “putting an innocent man to death will happen very rarely in capital punishment” – is not considered acceptable?
My biggest problem with this is the lack of truthful representation, on both sides of abortion really. However … when it comes to Planned Parenthood – why don’t they just come out and state that they endorse infatacide because … THEY DO.
See the first 30 seconds of this video – you don’t even have to watch it all to see a grown woman insist that the physician and woman have some kind of a right to choose what to do with a baby born alive as a result of a botched abortion.
I like the part where she says … “Well that’s up to the patient” and the guy responds … “Well at that point isn’t the BABY the patient?”
Just be honest.
I’ve already said everything’s however, a baby is only a baby when it has become physically separate from the mother. Up until that point, it is a part of the mother, of he here’s body, and must be treated at such.
Once the baby is separate from the mother, it becomes its own patient, and its survival is based on its own ability to survive and the skill of the medical attention it gets. If it was separated to early for survival, too damn bad. If it could have survived but the doctor did nothing, I believe their are laws that cover that already.
*I’ve already said all this*
So then if a nurse was administering lethal doses of drug A to patients during tonsillectomies, where they make a profit from performing tonsillectomies, and paid people salaries with profits from tonsillectomies, it’d be about tonsillectomies and not about murder? Please.
And I’m not entirely sure why anyone’s surprised that there are extremists on both sides of the issue. Some people shoot doctors and bomb clinics, and some people stab babies in the neck – and they all think they’re justified in doing so. There are some fucked up, sick puppies out there and they all believe themselves to be “good” people. And being “good” matters more to them than any objective truth ever could.
My point is that LEGAL abortion hardly ever produces a viable fetus, and if it does, the fetus is then a human being with all its own rights. Ending that life is murder, just as stabbing a 30 yr old to death would be.
What? I was arguing that it was about murder and not abortion! I made the same point as you!
An abortion that results in a viable fetus is not an abortion, its induced labor. Abortions cannot result in a viable fetus.
Ah, whoops. Followed the lines wrong, sorry!
No worries, they can get hard to follow alright 😉
Gosnell isn’t about abortion, but about regulation of medical providers. *Any* doctor that allowed unsanitary conditions similar to Gosnell’s clinic should have been shut down immediately, but the regulators just kept issuing warnings. And because regulators couldn’t be bothered to enforce the existing regulations, the statists will use it to justify more regulation.
The truly frustrating part, reading about it, is that people time and again got a warning — not the full picture, but enough to know something was wrong — and yet nothing went anywhere. Complaints and cases were filed but nothing went anywhere. He got fined several times for various things but promises to fix were accepted at face value.
I do think c andrew is right, it’s because of the status of the adult victims. Gosnell was providing abortion services for the poor and immigrants and otherwise desperate. I have a feeling there was perhaps the thought that it was a valuable service that nobody else seemed willing to do, so complaints and findings of poor hygiene were allowed to slide. Nobody wanted to go spend time among the poor and find out what was actually happening.
Also, I think a lot more of the policing of the US medical system is self-policing in fear of trial lawyers, rather than state medical boards and health inspectors. Which means that places frequented by those who are likely to sue tend to be pretty good, all things considered.
But here, many of the women knew the abortions they were getting were illegal, so they weren’t going to complain. The immigrants weren’t going to complain; they had no standard of care to compare to, and little English, and don’t get listened to.
In one breath you call them adult victims and in another you say they knew they were getting illegal abortions (that could result in a viable fetus being extricated from the womb). I’m confused as to how they can be both.
You can intend to do one illegal thing and still be victimized by the people “helping” you do it. In fact, I expect it happens a lot, and not just with abortions.
Right, but in this specific case, do we have any evidence that the adult people involved were “victims”? Or are we using the word because it makes us feel more comfortable about other people doing something that we find abhorrent (electing to have illegally late abortions that have a much higher chance of producing a viable fetus)?
I got the feeling it was the latter, and that doesn’t sit well with me (since it’s the same mechanism by which neofems and do-gooders have branded whores “victims”).
I alwaysend up wondering if the growth of the state is inevitable. Maybe the demand for paternalism is part of human nature? Until, of course, the oppression becomes so great that it collapses in upon itself.
I hope not.
I think in a way growth is inevitable as the human race grows in size and our societies grow in complexity. My pet theory is that nothing will really change until something causes a massive depopulation of the earth; I’m hoping it’s something like a virus instead of an economic apocalypse with armed gangs roving the streets.
That being said, I remember once hearing on the radio how the British Parliament perform a periodic ritual of going through and repealing acts that are outdated and/or unnecessary. I don’t know how effective it was (it was a while ago that I heard this), but I immediately thought that’s what we should be doing, probably annually.
I think it was krulac who suggested that for every law passed, there should be three that get repealed or something like that. I could get behind that too.
My view is that human nature/constraints on rational thought demands ever slightly-more government in the abstract (which is ultimately how people vote, since their vote carries essentially no weight in determining the outcome of an election). The 20th century saw a huge increase in the size of government because, for the first time, technology made pervasive, invasive government in line with the wishes of the public an feasible outcome. In prior centuries it was much easier to shirk ‘big government’ proclamations from a far-away capital, and so functionally small government persisted.
In the good old days, you could be executed because a night or samurai thought you weren’t sufficiently respectful. Maybe there were fewer regulations in writing and maybe the government spent less money, but government told you everything from what color to wear to what weapons to own to what God you should pray to.
No, we don’t live in any sort of utopia, but we never did. The king may have been far away, but there was a lord close enough and powerful enough to make your life hell if he wanted to, and there were plenty of people who worked for him who could do the same.
Great post, Maggie.
I don’t think that statists want the expansion in the scope, power and expense of gov’t to stop. As for the “half statists” I think they are willing to allow the power accorded to their opponents’ agenda to expand as long as their own agenda follows suit. How else does one explain the GOP? Well there is the Einstein quote about insanity but I don’t want to give Repubs that much moral credit. The ones that your article most applies to are the so-called champions of liberty who posture as such -usually for economic liberty – but are rabid about tightening the ratchet on personal liberties, the social conservatives. To the extent the rank and file SoCons are ignorant of the lockstep growth of gov’t power that follows upon the heels of their agenda, the Arab aphorism regarding fools comes to mind. For a glimpse into the mindset of these “know-naughts” I suggest a book titled “Indivisible” where the authors lay out their agenda for liberty and social order in truly Orwellian terms. One gem is their argument that banning same sex marriage actually increases “True Liberty” , an approach which is the right wing fun house mirror of the Bloomberg apologist you posted a few weeks ago who argued that NYC’s bans on cigarettes, salt and large sodas marked an increase in “Effective Liberty.”
//because only a miniscule fraction of laws enacted, no matter how odious or tyrannical, are ever repealed//
True, but it would be interesting to know how many laws have been struck down by the courts. That, for better or worse, is the mechanism by which laws are “repealed”. One ruling by the Supreme Court (State or Federal), can “repeal” hundreds of laws. Unfortunately, the legislative branch of our government (politicians ostensibly representing voters) has all but declared war on the judicial branch through litmus tests, demands for ideological conformity, if not an out and out refusal to nominate judges.
So, a Minoan labrys is now a melee weapon; curious.
The legislative branch is not the source of the problem – they only vote (or not) on the candidates nominated by the executive. Most nominees are prosecutors, while I can’t remember the last SC nominee that had any track record as a defense attorney. The legislators only get to accept or reject someone that has already been vetted for conformance to the ever-expanding State. Now and then, they actually reject a nominee due to excessive deference to governmental abuses (Bork, Harriet Myers), but not nearly often enough.
Great points, but what are WE going to do about it? WE need to be more activist, and not just about specific issues. If we want to maintain individual control over our own lives, we all need to oppose those who seek to overrule rights and freedoms – ALL rights and freedoms that currently exist, not just those that are convenient to one individual. And if YOU personally don’t agree with a particular right or freedom and support those who seek to overturn it, YOU”RE the problem too and have no right to complain as a hypocrite.
Freedom is agnostic. The data indicates our founding fathers knew best and their fundamental principles must be maintained if freedom is to survive.
I hope you enjoyed Stillwater, Maggie, and didn’t get too wet. 🙂
Great one, Maggie! One of your best, in my opinion.
The “statists,” a category in which you would probably include myself, are as many and varied in their opinions of what size of government is needed as any collection of libertarians.
For myself, government has to be large enough to counterbalance the extraordinary power–economic and political–of certain NGO’s (Non Governmental Organizations), especially multinational corporations.
We have not had a serious antitrust action brought against a corporation by the Federal government since the Carter Administration, and this has led to an egregious concentration of economic power by 6 Wall Street banking firms, a near monopoly of computer software by Microsoft, six corporations that effectively control the media, and an effective shrinkage of Defense Contractors to Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and Grumman-Northrup together with their subsidiaries.
This has also led to a concentration of an additional 20%+ of the wealth and nearly 15% of the income in the hands of the top 1% of the American populace, not because they are better at what they do, but because they are no longer sharing the wealth with the rest of us as the tax system forced them to do in the period 1945-80.
We cannot simply decide to personally boycott these monstrosities in order to change them; in many cases, they are the only choice that we have left.
I am a practical politician, power only acedes (sic?) to greater power. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Populi Custodibus. Who will guard the guardians? The people will. In fact, as Jefferson pointed out, they are the only ones who can be trusted to do so; but you have to keep them informed and involved in the political process. So breaking up the media monopolies must be first on our list of trust busting.
Now THAT was interesting. So much more to think about than Government BAD!
Thanks Sailor. And it is so much more interesting than “all government BAD!”