From a comment on the Tea Party policies

[fpb]

95% of American so-called conservative policy is nonsense. If you want to cut public expenditure, legislation and what are known as "cuts" are the bluntest and most damaging of blunt instruments. The very fact that Republicans talk about cutting federal departments as the measure of saving shows that they have not begun to understand the problem. The solution to obesity is not to cut off an arm, it is for the whole body to eat less. And that has very little to do with laws. What you want is to foster an administrative culture in which people take pride in doing more with less, in efficiency and effect. And there you can see why Reaganite demagoguery is a million miles from the point. How do you think the little guy at the bottom of the totem pole, the one who actually does the work, feels, when he is told by his own boss - the President is the head of the public sector, among other things - that he is the problem, not the solution, and that the scariest words in the language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help?" Such demagoguery and effrontery (history books will remember the Ronald Thatcher age as the Age of Bad Manners) may tickle the prejudices of the more ignorant voters, but it will do nothing for your own subordinates (because if you are President, they are) other than embitter them and make them defensive and mistrustful. Congratulations, Great Communicator. Congratulations, cheap imitators.

Comments

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

I could also point out that "government," in the US, can mean the Federal, State, County or city/local government...and that ever since WWII, the Federal government has taken more and more power unto itself, power that used to be exercised at lower levels.

This leads to a lot of friction for many reasons. One of them is that by its nature, the Federal Government is the ultimate blunt instrument..."like bringing a nuclear bomb to a streetfight," to quote Gibson's "Burning Chrome." Even if no harm is intended, its sheer size and preponderant power cause problems when used on less-than-national-level situations.

Another problem is that the Federal Government is dominated heavily, particularly in the parts devoted to execution of policy, by people from either the northeastern urban areas (Boston-to-Washington, mainly) or the urban areas of the West Coast (Greater LA/San Diego, the SF Bay Area, and the Puget Sound area). Many of these people have never really traveled, much less lived, outside of their urban comfort zones; they often refer, unironically, to areas like the one I live in as "flyover country." They are not so much malignant as ignorant, provincial, snobbish and uninterested in points-of-view other than their own.

Government has a place, but it is not God. It is not Father Christmas. And it is not always the optimum tool to solve problems. Things that work (or seem to work) in Italy or Britain often have major problems when translated to the US.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I won't say I disagree, but blunt and unthinking hostility does not work either.; There are some cases in which I would say that one department of state should be got rid of, In the case of America, I have serious doubt on the federal Department of Education. The old American systems, whatever their faults, created one of the best educated populations on the planet, and some of the best universities. Was there a driving need to subject them all to a single authority? No, I don't think there was, and I don't think results have been so splendid either. But if you get rid of the Department of Education, you have to go through the following steps:
1) have an accurate assessment of everything it does - and I mean EVERYTHING.
2) Assess which of these activites are ALTOGETHER unnecessary and can simply be cancelled, and which should be preserved and either vested in a vestigial Federal operation of some sort, or else handed over to states, counties and munidipalities;
3) assess how many people are going to be out of work and whether anything may be done for them.
As you can see, Tea Party slogans and Reaganite demagoguery don't begin to tackle even the problems they may see.
(Incidentally, while ministries or departments should not be invented or destroyed except with great care, the same is not true for government./ federal programs. Those should be shut down much more frequently and drastically than they are. A classic instance: http://fpb.livejournal.com/260448.html )

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I know from "blunt and unthinking hostility to government." Trust me on this---I know people whose attitude toward the government, any government, makes the Tea Party look like so many North Koreans praising the Great, Dear and whichever-one-they've-got-now leaders.

A lot of hostility comes from bad experiences with government. Were I, for example, a medical marijuana patient whose supply was constantly being interrupted, in open defiance of the clear will of the people of my state expressed at the polls, by the Feds, I would be ill-disposed to the Federal government, to say the very least. Multiply that by myriads of other examples and what you see as blunt and unthinking hostility is, at least, explicable. (Being much closer to the phenomeon, myself, my view is much more nuanced. Kind of like Italian or British domestic politics...I'm sure that your view of them is much more in-depth than mine, simply because you're a lot closer to them.

The Department of Education is one oft-cited example of a department that should be abolished; among other things, I can find no Constitutional justification for its existence. One reason why we Americans so revere our Constitution is that it serves the same purpose as protective circles do when conjuring demons---keeps a very dangerous entity in its place. Allowing the precedent of letting the government act extra-Constitutionally is very dangerous.

Another problem comes when a program or idea that was originally well-meant turns out catastrophically wrong, but still has enough of a constituency to make even touching it dangerous. Cases in point include Social Security (which was originally never meant as the main support of elderly citizens, and was intended to be for only the last few years of life, but was not modified as life-expectancy rose), Prohibition (by the late 1920s it was generally acknowledged to be an utter failure, but too many people had a large emotional investment in appearing virtuous by publicly supporting it; it took the shock of the Depression to end it for good) and affirmative action (which was honestly not meant as a quota system but became one almost the minute it was enacted, and has increased workplace hostility for those groups favored by it).

Government, as I've said, has a legitimate place; whether I like it or not humans are a social species. However, government action should be a last resort, not a first, and should always be confined to the lowest levels possible. If, for example, I have a problem with my city government, I can go downtown and talk to them directly; for state-level problems it's an hour and a half to the state capital, but Washington DC's a major expedition for me, and I'm less likely to be listened to the higher up I have to go.