There is a serious problem in America now of people, whether ordinary citizens or politicians, talking as if every local or national crisis requires immediate and expensive government interference. In fact, our country would be much better off if the federal government were not involved in most of the sectors, programs, and industries where it currently meddles.
George Mason, who died Oct. 7, 1792, was the “father of the Bill of Rights” and rightly feared an overly empowered federal government. In one speech he made, he was rather overly zealous in criticizing the Constitution, because he was unwilling to admit that the Articles of Confederation were impossibly ineffective, and that the Constitution was the best such document to be obtained at that time. But he did make a couple of interesting points about the dangers of giving men too much power over a large area of land and many thousands of people.
Mason, referring to the proposed House of Representatives, warned, “This, like all other assemblies, will be composed of some bad and some good men; and considering the natural lust of power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people.” Of course, the other Founders aimed to restrict such potential oppression by having a careful system of checks and balances. The problem is, most of the federal government simply hasn't bothered to abide by the Constitution for a very long time, and that is almost as often true of Republicans as of Democrats.
One obvious example of what I mean in agreeing with Mason comes from the COVID-19 lockdowns. Everyone, whether leftist or conservative, talked as if the federal government had to have some sort of major plan to impose on the country in order to react to a virus with a 99% survival rate. As a matter of fact, it is unconstitutional for the federal government to be involved in healthcare, and the whole country would’ve been much better off had the government refused to implement any major COVID-19 responses. It could have been a normal flu season with none of the economic, cultural, and psychological disasters that did occur.
For centuries, people had children and celebrated paternity and maternity without the government telling them to do so. But because our federal government has, for many decades, pushed baby-killing abortion, now some conservatives argue that the best way to counteract the pro-death propaganda is more redistribution of wealth to incentivize having more babies.
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As a matter of fact, the government actually already tried that by giving single mothers on welfare more money. That genius Democrat plan helped fuel the out-of-wedlock maternity crisis we currently face in America. Redistributing wealth to incentivize motherhood is not as morally evil as dismembering unborn babies, of course, but it is still unjust and fundamentally opposed to our founding principles on property rights. Americans need to stop requiring that the government be continually involved in family life. The problem is that politicians don’t want to pull out of unconstitutional areas or sectors where they caused more harm than good, because the desire for power has such pull. Why restrict the welfare state when it justifies you in confiscating more and more money from other people?
I once heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak at a rally where he warned the crowd that if you give the federal government a new power, no matter how temporary you think it will be, the government will never willingly surrender that power again. That is exactly how we arrived at the massive bureaucracy and overreaching federal government that we have today. The lust for power is a serious threat, and American voters need to wake up to the danger instead of fueling it.
