Day: October 13, 2012

Forty years ago or so, I very briefly worked in a real “shovel ready” job using a real shovel on some government contract work. First day, the “feddle gummint” inspector came by and told me I was working too hard and to lean on my shovel for a while. True. Ever since then, I’ve looked askance at “gummint workers” and wondered just how hard they really do work and whether anything they do is really something that the “gummint” needs to do at all.

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Do note that I know some government functions are necessary and that some of those employed to do essential work actually do work. I’m just not convinced that very much of what the federal government (or even state governments for that matter) claims it needs to do really needs to be done by government at all–or at that level–OR that most of those in government jobs are actually either working or working at anything that should be done at all, or be done by a government worker.

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Further disclosure: Three members of my immediate and extended family are arguably “government workers.” One has for all his adult life worked as an employee of the National Parks Service, or some subsidiary or affiliated agency (he’s a real worker, but I have never approached him with a discussion of why I believe the Parks Service is unconstitutional, regardless what the Supreme Court has tortuously reasoned). Another holds down a state government position that is tasked with something that is constitutional under that state’s constitution. Is the work he does essential? No. Is it needed? Arguable. Perhaps. The last is a community employee who does not work directly for any city, county, state or federal agency but whose salary is funded by county, state and even (wrongly, IMO) by federal funds. The work this person does is work the community needs and indeed requires be done.

*shrugs* Some functions are necessary and proper. ALL government action should be at the lowest level possible–both in impact and in funding/supervision (subsidiary and transparent). That is, any necessary and proper task of government that can be funded and performed by a town itself, should NOT be funded or performed by the county or state or federal governments. Any necessary and proper task that cannot be performed at the lowest level possible should be examined carefully to determine whether or not it is indeed BOTH necessary AND proper for government to perform at all. I suspect that any honest examination of the necessary and proper functions of government would reveal that most things being done by government nowadays, at all levels, are neither necessary nor proper for civil government (at any level) to be fooling about with.

Of course, that’s the rub: honest examination. As Cwazy Unka Joe and his Immoderate “Moderator” demonstrated the other night, something approaching at least half of the country is unwilling to be honest about government–unwilling to the point that they have MADE themselves unable to be honest.

Remember, one of the reasons the Founders tried to moderate democracy with many different republican damping mechanisms is, in my restatement,

“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”

Just sayin’.