There are few aspects of our lives that government doesn’t touch in some way, from macroeconomics to home economics. But should it? This week, we’re getting philosophical — we want to hear about what you think the role and scope of government should be. It’s time to mind the gap.
The role of government. Whoa. That’s a huge subject that deserves a short pithy glib reply to do it proper justice. 🙂
The constitution would have it that governments purpose is to provide for the general welfare and secure our common defense. I can’t deny that a common defense is important, but for the past two hundred years we’ve been less interested about defending ourselves as we have been about being just generally offensive to everyone else on the planet. We bring hot death to pretty much everyone, at least once, sometimes we bring it a bunch of times, just because it’s something we’re used to doing. Yes, we’re that disgusting and jaded. Yay America.
As a “Filthy Liberal Scum” I’m fond of the other end of the spectrum, the general welfare part. What should government do? It should manage the socialized aspects of life that we can’t really do well individually. Things like insurance, protection from natural disasters, and welfare for the people who through no fault of their own can’t make ends meet. There shouldn’t be any homeless people, to say anything about homeless children. If you are a child in America you should not want for food, healthcare, or housing. It’s governments role to redistribute wealth through the application of taxes to address these common social needs.
If you are a conservative then pretty much everything in this post should make you burst into flames, and in the spirit of being a conscientious host, please go outside to immolate in private, we can’t have your second-hand smoke making anyone inside sick.
There are many other things the government can do, and probably should, but the general take away I think is that we’re war’s bitch and we should be paying attention to the more important things like our children and education than breaking our teeth in some very far-away sand-pit.