:: Running from the Thought Police ::
Reality-Based Thoughts, Ruminations, and Unsolicited Opinions of a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
:: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 ::
"Small Government" Doesn't Work
Those who've been reading this blog for a while know that my general philosophy is that Government exists to do things that no one else can, and that this extends controversially into the realm of economic regulation and minor social engineering. When I came up with this idea, I had thought it a universal understanding that disaster response was a major responsibility of any national government. Apparently, this isn't so, what with the director of FEMA and the Secretary of Homeland Security both having no clue what the actual situation is in the gulf states when it's their jobs to know. They didn't even get the idea of doing food drops into New Orleans until some news anchors suggested it to them. The public's watching this, and hopefully this'll get imprinted on the national consciousness, because up until now I don't think that anyone outside the more strident liberal idealogues actually believed that the neocons intended to take apart our government from the inside out. There's a reason why a file of a Norquist quote about drowning the government in a bathtub on top of a picture of the flooded city of New Orleans has been going around the liberal blogosphere: it strikes a cord when one sees the results of so callous a national outlook. This is the philosophy we voted for as a country in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. We've only ourselves to blame for putting these people in charge of the people's things.
I mention all this depressing stuff because Atrios has posted on his site what is supposedly the Senate Democrats' Relief Plan for the session of congress that begins this week. I haven't found it on the Senate Democratic Caucus website yet, but the staffers involved may not have been in the office to post it yet. In any case, plans like this is what I believe government is for - dealing with and responding to problems that only government can, rather than scaling back government involvement in the name of Liberty while leaving our own citizens to starve or die of exposure.
Please, in 2006 can we elect some people who actually want to run the government, i.e. not Republicans or Libertarians?
:: The Squire 1:08 AM :: email this post:: ::
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