Government and liberty are mutually exclusive. As government grows larger, individual liberty is diminished. All levels of governments are vampires that suck the blood of freedom from citizens. Typically when we discuss the oppressive growth of suffocating government we focus on the federal aspect, but as the national footprint grows larger, the state and local entities follow suit. Our liberties are squeezed and reduced at all levels. Given this context, there are two dominant approaches to restoring our liberty under a constitutional government. One view is that we must begin with the local governments where it may be easier to generate support because of people’s knowledge of how their rights have eroded. A second course of action is suggested for attacking at the federal level because of the noxious mandates that tie the hands of many local governments. Their position is that local and state governments are generally hamstrung in their opportunities for maneuvering around and beyond the oppressive federal apparatus.
They are both correct. We have negligently allowed our state and local governments to become mirror images of the tyrannical federal leviathan. We may have become a little queasy as we watched our local governments embrace new duties and programs, but our internal alarm bells were muted by the magical words….”federal grant or federal cost-share.” In the mystical magic world of government funding we often overlook that all grants from government—federal, state or local—are funded by taxpayer dollars….or borrowed money. Many people go to work every day and labor for many hours so that government can confiscate a portion of their labor to ladle out among communities and earn the loving adoration of the recipients. It represents a scam of the highest level. It is a redistributive technique that seeks to buy votes and minimize the differences between communities. It is a nefarious method of denying individuals and their local neighborhoods their own unique ways of dealing with their very local problems. The local leadership and citizens may celebrate the infusion of state and federal money as a serendipitous event….maybe even something earned because of their histories as dutiful taxpayers, but the final analysis is that it’s all a shell game financed with borrowed money. The government takes taxes (actually EARNED PERSONAL PROPERTY) from all who pay and trickles it back to selective communities to maintain their goodwill and eager compliance. Con men have gone to jail for doing less on a smaller scale.
While the financial, fiscal and economic aspects of the shell game are not defensible, the immoral elements are worse. Individuals and their local communities must forfeit their taxes while facing financial and criminal penalties if they do not. They must petition the state or the federal government for crumbs in order to address their most pressing local problems. The petitioning process is weighted with massive amounts of paperwork and the communities must justify and rationalize why they should be placed on the ever-growing “waiting list.” The communities lose control of their own wealth, their own priority lists, their own remedies and their dignity. Meanwhile the levels of government involved in the allocation of funds extract their “cut” of the action…..and the final result is a costly project that could have been completed more efficiently and more quickly if the local areas had kept their dollars at home and addressed their problems themselves.
The communities and the individuals who support them sacrifice their freedom for a falsehood. When the 30% government carrying fee is deducted, when the mandatory prevailing wages are paid, the locales yield around 55% of their 100% tax contribution. They can take some solace in the fact that their payment of the government carrying fee (overhead) does help to alleviate unemployment by assuring that hordes of bureaucrats will be available to harass the communities at every step of the desired project. Freedom and big government are not compatible. Morality is the essence of liberty. A moral person will exercise a full measure of freedom by not infringing upon the life, liberty or property (including labor) of another. By demanding a portion of a person’s labor through taxation or by restraining or constraining an individual’s use of her or his property, government treads into the world of immorality.
Clearly some element of lawful coexistence is necessary for people to enjoy their communities. Government therefore assumes the role of arbiter for contractual disputes and for protecting the community from outside threats. In addition, government is the mechanism for assuring that individuals observe the moral mandate of non-interference in one another’s lives, liberty and property. The ultimate result is that legitimate government’s primary and sole duties are conflict resolution, community defense and the protection and preservation of individual liberty. When government at any level exceeds its mandate, it becomes a threat to freedom and forfeits its legitimacy. Growing government or big government and liberty are clearly mutually exclusive. They cannot exist in the same space, the same time and the same hearts.
On the air Tuesday from 6:00-7:00pm on the Talk of Toledo,
1370 WSPD. Our guest will be Doris Herringshaw, candidate for Wood County Commissioner. www.wspd.com
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