A Word for Conservatives

Ronald Reagan, when he was running for president, did a pretty good job of convincing a lot of Americans that "government is the problem," and we'd all be better off with less government regulation, smaller government bureaucracy, and so on. A lot of people believed what he said, and still, some 30 years later, it's common to hear people say that government is bad.

To these people I say, if you don't like government, let me make a suggestion for you. Move to Mississippi, where there are very low taxes. Also--just coincidentally--they have the worst education, the lowest literacy, the lowest life expectancy, the greatest rate of obesity. They rank at the bottom of almost every list. All because of very low government spending--which correlates with the low taxes they have.

At the other extreme might be a country like Norway, where taxes are very high but the government provides nearly everything everyone could want, pretty much cradle-to-grave.

Maybe, my imaginary anti-government friends, once you've abolished the government, you might find you need to try to get together with your neighbors to arrange for fires to be put out, criminals to be caught, roads to be built, traffic lights and stop signs to be put up--oh, and how about trying to ensure the safety of the food you eat, the medicines you take. . .

Sure, you could form some kind of association with your neighbors to do these things--but then you'd have a government!

By the way, I posted this (in pretty much these words) as a comment on an AOL/Daily Finance article on the Republican candidates--and a reply to my comment called me a "commie." Nice, reasonable refutation of my ideas.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein