Mar 06 2009

“Big government” equivalence is a smokescreen

Category: Congress,economy,mediaharmonicminer @ 8:31 pm

Both parties love big government _ just different programs

Republicans say they’re outraged that Obama would “borrow and spend” his way to a new behemoth government. But they borrowed and spent their way through the ’80s and the current decade. And they love big government, when it’s at the Pentagon .

Democrats from Obama on down insist that they don’t like big government, that they’re just forced into a temporary spending spree by the recession. But Democrats love big government as well, when it’s for social programs such as universal health care.

“The basic difference between Democrats and Republicans in recent decades is which aspect of government spending they prefer,” said Steven Schier , a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. “With the Republicans, it’s defense. With the Democrats, it’s education, environment, health care etc. That’s been the major difference between the two parties going back to Reagan.”

What a crock.

Without a strong military, a nation disappears, or must depend on some other nation for its defense. Who, exactly, would have defended the USA during the Cold War, if not the USA? Who, exactly, will defend the USA now against the various threats on the world stage? Bluntly, our biggest error has probably been letting OTHER nations subsist under the USA defense umbrella for so long, especially Europe and Japan, but that’s Monday morning quarterbacking at this point… After WW II, it seemed like a good idea for Germany and Japan not to be militarized.

But what happens if a nation does not provide nationalized health care and retirement programs, centralized education bureaucracies and regulatory agencies? Not much. People simply make other arrangements. The market works, except when government interferes with it, and then blames the market for the outcome of its own interference.

Defense is one of the two biggest absolutely required roles for government, the other being the maintenance of law and order in the interest of public safety.

In any case, the amount of money that has been spent on social programs since 1960 is ENORMOUS, and social spending remains 60% or more of the national budget. And Obama’s intentions in social spending make the Pentagon’s fondest wishlist look like chump change.

The Lefty media, of course, wants to pretend there is a moral equivalence between what a nation must do to survive, and what Left leaning politicians must promise in order to be re-elected.

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