Government "care"

Greetings, Patriots.

My regards for not posting last week. Times have been busy.

I want to start off this week's post with a recollection from my young adult years. Just over a decade ago, I had the opportunity to travel and live abroad. Specifically, I lived in an eastern European, post-Soviet bloc country that was still very much in the throes of its transition from an oppressive communist system of government to a more western, "capitalist" (if it could be called that) system.

To say that being overseas was an "eye-opener" for me, especially as a young person in my early twenties, would be an understatement. There were many aspects of the culture in which I now found myself that I found quite shocking, even as I observed the growing number of similarities that it bore to the American culture from which I had just traveled.

In particular, I will never forget visiting a popular place that was close to the town square and seeing just how filthy, decayed, and decrepit that a certain part of it had become. And I remember thinking how incomprehensible it was that anyone could allow their property to become that unkempt and sullied and downright painful to look upon. As I aired my observations out loud (which I'm known to do regularly), I was then told WHY the town center had become so unclean.

It's well known to many people that during the Soviet era, government controlled most everything; the economy, property, much of human behavior, et cetera. As a result of this, government also found itself largely responsible for the CARE of everything as well. As most liberty-loving people are aware, this is often a recipe for disaster since government is usually good at only one thing; namely, punishing violators of individual liberty and property rights. Be that as it may, however, many people during the Soviet era looked to their central planner overlords as "groundskeepers" in addition to their plethora of additional roles.

When the Soviet Union came crashing down in 1989, however, much of the government went belly-up and, with it, many of the services that it had once provided...to include property upkeep. Hence, the graffiti and other forms of blight that I witnessed shortly after my arrival.

"So what?" you might ask. What does this story have to do with anything? In truth, there are perhaps several lessons that we can draw from this short illustration. However, for purposes of this blog, probably the chief lesson for us here is that government, despite its best intentions, often does its constituents the greatest disservices when attempting to conduct the most noble services that are outside of its most fundamental role. In this case, government did its people a disservice by taking on the responsibility of civic upkeep, thus disincentivizing private citizens and enterprises to take on that role themselves...which likely would have resulted in a better job of keeping the grounds clean and healthy-looking. Instead, government control and care led to poorer quality.

The list of examples goes on, too. When we entrust our health care (Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare), our retirement (Social Security), our environmental well-being (EPA), our housing market (Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac), and other aspects of our existence to a centrally planned bureaucracy, two things happen: 1) We lose liberty, and 2) We are less motivated to care for and steward those life aspects ourselves thanks to government's empty promises to care for and steward them for us.

Government's legitimate function is two-fold: 1) Protecting life, liberty, and private property rights; and 2) enforcing contracts between private parties. When it goes beyond that two-fold function, as we have allowed it to here in America, it becomes an enemy of the people, rather than an ally.

Our only option at that point, as free people, is to disobey the unjust laws that are hostile to the cause of liberty. Because, too often, as John Adams once stated: "Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

Let us fight then, whether by repealing unjust laws or by disobeying them, to preserve the cause of liberty and live free. The fabric of our great nation depends on it.

Praesant Libero!

-Warren Brisbane