Thought of the Day “Is Goldilocks Dead Politically?” Sydney Williams
http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com
“Goldilocks was very tired by this time; she went upstairs to the bedroom. She lay down on the first bed, but it was too hard. Then she lay on the second bed, but it was too soft.Then she lay down on the third bed and it was just right. Goldilocks fell asleep. Robert Southey (1774-1843) The Three Bears, 1837
It is the Goldilocks search for the right balance between too much government and individual freedom that foments so much political division: Have Washington’s entitlements and its marriage with social media made government intrusive? Has defunding the police, and the subsequent rising street crime caused us to become anarchial?
No matter one’s political leanings, we all recognize the importance of federal government: to provide defense against foreign enemies; to maintain civil order at home; to care for those unable to care for themselves; to permit and encourage interstate commerce and transportation; to provide an agency to collect taxes and fees; to have a legislature to enact laws, an executive to carry them out, and a court system to adjudicate differences. At the same time, we believe in the ideals of independence and self-reliance, that we are individuals, free to think, speak, write, assemble, and pray as we will. Our differences are where we place ourselves along those dual (and sometimes dueling) spectrums, of government dependency and individual freedom. As government expands, freedom shrinks.
Political differences, driven by identity politics and ad hominem attacks, have become so venomous that a Cato Institute poll in July 2020 showed that 62% of Americans feel they cannot freely express their political preferences. Would anyone argue that number has lessened in the last two years? Most affected are conservatives (77%), then moderates (64%), and liberals (52%). The only group willing to freely express itself are “staunch” liberals, at 58 percent, not a surprise given their support from mainstream media. However, a New York Times/Sienna College poll taken last March found that 84% of Americans said being afraid to exercise freedom of speech is a “serious problem.”
Unfortunately, it is natural for government to get bigger. A federal bureaucrat knows she will personally benefit as her department expands. An op-ed in last Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal compared the inevitable growth of government to the ratchet – a tool that allows movement in only one direction. Gerard Baker wrote that government expansion is abetted by the media where the “dominant voices … [believe] publicly funded services are morally superior to private sector activity…” Nevertheless, both parties have been guilty of government expansion, but it has been the Left that has been most aggressive. Ironically, it has also been Democrats – the party of “big” government – that has been using the slogan “Our democracy is under threat” for the 2022 midterms.
Conservatives prefer less government, progressives more. While those differences have been exaggerated by political parties who see job security in running attack ads and damning opponents, and by a media that sees revenue increases in partisan reporting, what is needed is compromise. “Without cooperation,” wrote Micah Mattix, in a review of The Death of Learning in last week’s National Review, “there is no civilization.” The risk is we fall deeper into the abyss of prejudicial political hatred. Keep in mind, authoritarianism, whether Fascism or Communism, comes from more government, not less.
An increase in government means an increase in spending. Since FDR and the Depression days of the 1930s, augmented by Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s and added to by both Parties over the past several decades, the federal government has assumed more and more responsibility for our health and welfare. Now, via indoctrination in our schools about critical race theory and gender identification, they are molding our children’s moral characters. What is taught in school in one generation becomes political ideology in the next.
Yet, since capital markets have done well over the past eight and nine decades, have we not been living in a Goldilocks moment? Perhaps, but questions need be asked. Has the quest for “clean” energy sources hindered long term economic growth? Has the financial band of borrowing been stretched too taut? Has government intrusion gone too far, stripping away our independence? Are too many of us too dependent on government largesse? Would Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher be possible in today’s continuously connected world, with ‘Big Brother’ keeping constant watch? Are not proposals to do away with the filibuster and “pack” the Supreme Court actual threats to democracy?
Has our national debt become unsustainable? Since 1947 and through the first decade of the 21st Century, the national debt to GDP ratio ran between the mid 40’s and high 60s. In 2014, it exceeded a hundred percent of GDP for the first time since World War II and has been increasing as a percent ever since. But the Federal Reserve kept interest rates abnormally low for the past dozen years, so the effect of higher debt has not been fully felt by the American taxpayer. Interest expense in the fiscal year ending September is expected to account for about 7% of the federal budget. Next year, the number is likely to be substantially higher. Will the defense budget be cut? Will transfer payments be reduced? Or will we just borrow more, passing on obligations to future generations?
Externally and internally, there have been a growing number of attacks on capitalism and Western culture. A 2018 poll showed that only 45% of young Americans (ages 18-29) have a positive view of capitalism. Will today’s anti-capitalist youths become tomorrow’s budding entrepreneurs? High school and elementary school courses, like the 1619 Project that offers a distorted view of U.S. history and gender identification studies in grade school, have been accompanied by a decline in traditional reading and math scores. Family and faith have given way to globalization and multiculturalism. Have we slayed the goose that laid the golden egg?
In this tug-a-war between government dependency and personal independence, Goldilocks’ porridge is not “just right.”
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