Mirror, mirror, on the wall….
On The Reflection In The Mirror
By Karl Neathammer
Unless you had your olfactory nerve cauterized, the smell that permeates Nevada and Carson City is the malodorous stench of politics wafting through the air.
This is perhaps the time to reflect on how we have bastardized our own form of government.
Federal, state, and local elected officials, along with potential candidates are huddling with their political consultants to decide which issues will strike a chord with the electorate. If no important issues exist then they will create them.
As I write this commentary, the pollsters are hard at work gathering data, while hacks from both political parties, along with “non-partisan” candidates are on telephones glorifying their respective “chosen ones.” A list is drawn up of the items that people want (as opposed to what is actually needed) from their government, everything from bike paths, ice skating rinks, a new library for Carson City, to pay increases for the “protected classes” known as government and city employees.
Today, government at all levels is blamed for everything from bad highways to a system of social services crumbling under its own weight. We blame the politicians for letting government become too bloated and inefficient, for imposing absurd mandates and prohibitions on business and upon the individual, for micro-managing our lives and confiscating our earnings.
The blame is misplaced!
We are to blame!
No one else!
We are all guilty!
Not the politicians!
Not the bureaucrats.
To curse the inefficiencies of government is to curse the face in the mirror. The local and state government animals, by their very nature, have a voracious appetite, but they never would have grown so large had we not overfed the corpulent beasts.
Our Constitution did not design government to do anything but implement the provisions and principles enumerated in the document. When we demand government at all levels to assume functions outside that sphere, we are requiring it to do something for which it was not designed to do, and because of those demands, government performs those functions poorly and inefficiently.
As a country, state, and here in our own community, we now legislate philanthropy, instead of being charitable. Less than a third of the taxes that fund government social programs actually escape the bureaucracy. Conversely, individuals and private charities spend less than a third of receipts on administration. If someone is abusing the generosity of private charity, they can be dealt with on a stern and private individual level. Encouragement toward becoming self-supporting is more compelling when the donor and recipient are face to face.
As a country, state, and city, we now legislate morality, civility and common sense instead of practicing the tenets of these doctrines. We allow the federal, state, and local governments to tell us what we may watch on television, how we can medicate ourselves, how we must keep records and run our business, even how, and whom we can like and dislike. We have lost sight of the differences between that which government must do to ensure domestic tranquility, and that which should be left to the conscience of the individual. If I elect not to install a wheelchair ramp in my place of business, the marketplace should judge my punishment, not government.
I firmly believe that government at all levels has the moral and constitutional obligation to promote the general welfare, not provide it or attempt to legislate a particular outcome. To promote means to nurture, not coerce. When we, the people, through the instrument of our government use the threat of force and incarceration to make into law that which should be discretionary to the individual, we usurp the rights and good will of the individual.
We create instead disrespect for those fundamental laws needed to preserve peace and tranquility. We diminish the authority of law in the “real” world beyond the brick and mortar of Congress, the Nevada State Legislature, or City Hall.
Have you checked your mirror lately?
- Carson City
- animals
- Bad
- bike
- Business
- carson
- Charitable
- charity
- City
- community
- Community,
- Congress
- Constitution
- country
- DO SOMETHING!
- functions
- gathering
- Government
- Ice
- Ice Skating
- local
- lost
- May
- nature
- Nevada
- Nevada State Legislature
- new
- New Library
- News
- parties
- peace
- Philanthropy
- Political
- Politics
- Preserve
- Programs
- run
- Services
- skating
- social services
- state
- State Legislature
- Taxes
- television
- Legislature
- Library