Sep 15 2007
The role of Government to protect
I’ve had some interesting discussions lately regarding governments.
So thinking about it today I realized that a government only has two real roles.
To Protect and to Provide. Provide is easy. It provides education and welfare and all those various entitlements, and sundry other benefits. I don’t want to blog about that. I might have to take a position on Universal Health Care.
I am more concerned today about protection. I see there being 3 areas of protection. The obvious one is protection from foreign enemies. We have the military and such to ensure our people are safe from the bad guys. There is also an element of internal protection, where the Federal Government ensures that the states are not taking advantage of each other and that business are not taking advantage of consumers..
But the most insidious element of protection is the nanny state “protect you from yourself” mentality, and our Federal, State and even City and County Governments are masters of it.
Take a few recent examples. First, Smoking. Once upon a time almost everyone smoked. It was common and everyday. But as the health risk became more publicized, the government grew more intrusive. Now, you cannot smoke practically anywhere, not because a business decides to ban it, but because bureaucrats decided smoking in doors was naughty.
And California has taken that to the extreme by seeking to ban smoking in homes. Yes, in homes. If you are in an apartment or condo, in several cities there are now ordinances in the works to an smoking, and even in free standing homes if a neighbor complains.
Look, we can agree smoking is bad for you, but as long as the federal and state governments allow the legal sale of Tobacco, then they have to accept that people are going to smoke, and as sidewalks and parks get banned, and even cars in some instances, what is left when you take away homes?
What this is, is a reflection of the fact that the government does not have the stones to outlaw the sale of cigarettes. After all, if it is so bad, it should be banned altogether, right?
Then you have the idiotic driving laws. I buy car seats. But booster seats for 8 year olds? Mandatory seat belts and helmets?
And what about the maximum speed limit on freeways? The Federal Government holds Federal Highway tax revenue hostage to force states to comply with the speed limit laws as well as seat belt and helmet laws. Helmets for kids on bikes is another one.
And how about the drinking age. At the age of 18 you can get married, but you cannot buy a bottle of wine to toast your new bride. You can enlist to the military and die for your country, but you cannot toast your comrades with a pint of ale. And you can exercise your right to vote but you can’t drink your sorrow when your candidate loses.
And the only justification for it is that we want to protect people from themselves.
I don’t really have a profound point except to say that when considering the governments role in protecting its citizens, our government seems to take what has become an unhealthy interest in it. It spends more time and money studying ways that some whack nut research claims is a dangerous activity, then developing a new law to make it all better.
We are banning trans fat because we do not trust people to eat sensibly. And the list goes on and on.
I liked it better when you grew up, you became an adult and you had to take responsibility for yourself.
We have become a nation of children, coddled and protected by our nanny.
Meanwhile, our borders are wide open, our politicians refuse to see the reality of the threats in the world, and sexual predators can register as homeless.
I feel so safe.
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27 Responses to “The role of Government to protect”
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I only have one problem with what you have to say in this post Karl… although I agree with every point you made.
It’s not the federal government’s job to provide anything. That’s up to state and local governments. Our politicians realized a long time ago (well before any of the ones in office now were even born) that they could have more power if that was changed, and so the federal government began to intrude where it has no right.
The root of the “nanny” role of our government comes from that abuse of power. If government provides, then government gets to set the conditions for providing. So government takes our freedoms from us, using the excuse of reducing the costs of what it provides.
I don’t want the federal government to provide for me. I believe that with God’s help and with perseverance and personal responsibility I can provide for myself. The problem with that attitude is that it reduces the government’s power over me, so they have to protect me from me.
We’ve all become in many ways slaves to the federal government. That’s even worse than being children.
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Karl,
My views on this is the idiots that sit there in their grand elite positions (they think) can’t do anything to stop drugs, illegals, crime, their corruption and money grabbing, back stabbing to try to make themselves look intellegent?, their total ineptness so they are going to attack smoking. I bet they don’t want to give back the money to the lobbists that they took from the tobacco companies.
In CA they already have laws that the homeless cannot smoke in public. What are they supposed to do go knock on a door and ask to come in to smoke? They live underbridges for God sakes. They have an apartment complex somewhere out there that drunks can live in for free so they can have support from other drunks. Good one. They said it works for some but not others. These are real nice, brand new appartments not run down hovels. What a plan.
They built a complex for deaf seniors so they could feel protected and live safe with all the lights and alarms. Great idea. Until they let the perfectly ok people that said they wanted to live there because they liked it and wanted it. What was wrong with telling the ok people sorry these are for people with out hearing. Go away. No now there are deaf people that can’t get an apartment there because the hearing are taking up the room. But only the drunks get the nice apartments they have???
I think there might be a way to cut CA off and float it down the coast and attach it to Mexico and give it back. Then we ask for our money back. That would be a win, win. Illegals and corrupt government officials and weirdo’s gone.
An excellent article, and I agree with most everything you said. But the Federal government has only one true responsibility, to protect/fight wars/keep out enemies. If you want to give them a second roll, then let it in infrastructure, highways, etc. They should NOT be in the roll of providing welfare or anything else. That’s part of the nanny state.
Individual communities, counties, and States should be in control of everything else.
I agree if tobacco is so bad, then make it illegal. Otherwise let people make their own choices. Same thing with seat belts, and all the other rules.
Not they tell us what we can eat, drink, breath,… it’s wrong.
Thanks all for the comments.
Great points. I should clear one thing up.
I didn’t really want to wrap my mind around the role of provider, I was saving that till I had more time, because it is just as harshly abused by the nanny mentality. By provider I see the Federal Government as providing the things we need to prosper, not suddenly becoming the teet at which we must nurse in order to survive.
But as Irtexas notes, the states can take that role and run with it as well.
The fact is that in either role, they should be as transparent and unintrusive as possible with the daily lives of the citizens, and be there to facilitate the citizens efforts to prosper, not replace it by handing them a welfare check.
The real sorrow in that area is not so much how “overly helpful” the government is, it is how lazy and willing to accept help the people are.
Our frontier mentality has died.
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Karl,
“To Protect and to Provide.” I’m (very nearly) 100% with Perri and Debbie on this: governments have no legitimate authority OR responsibility to provide one single solitary thing, apart from a very limited brief to provide infrastructure where private means fail.
When Johnson’s “Great Society” push kicked off the latest round of irresponsible government giveaways of OPM, private charity was already doing a better job than govertnment so-called welafare has managed in the last 40+ years. In fact, government “welfare” (and meddling in other social areas) has managed to cause immeasureable harm to every area it has touched.
Sure, provision of some services is rational, but the further from strictly local control services get, the less honest justification is available for politicians–see the completely dishonest twisting of “provide for the general welfare” into “steal from some to give to others” performed as a con on immensely stupid sheeple by the “feddle gummint” or the wrecking of public education by remote “feddle gummint” and state bureaucraps… with the helpful conivance of lazy, stupid, shortsighted parents, lazy, stupid, shortsighted, greedy local politicians and public school administrators. (Study the history of public education with a skeptic’s eye to uncover the unredacted story of supplanting private education that was working quite well with public indoctrination centers. *sigh*)
No. No way the States that formed the Union either had in mind providing cradle to grave services for their populaces, nor did the Framers envision any such thing. In fact, every time politicians *spit* proposed doing so in Congress (before Lincoln’s War made the Constitution just another piece of paper to twist to political ends), those who were there, or had learned at the feet of the Framers consistently shot down expanding government into “providing” for the people as completely without Constitutional authority.
No, governments derive their legitimate authority from performing protective functions–protecting law-abiding citizens from outlaws, by means of both preventative measures (like a FENCE with ARMED GUARDS!) and by exacting justice (terrible and terrifying vengeance–the “terrible swift sword” of song and scripture) upon those who prey upon others. Straying from that brief leads governments into areas where any authority exercised is upon extremely shaky moral grounds.
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