"To the unknown civilization that is growing in America."~~from the dedication page of F.A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty
It was a great scheme to initiate a break-up. Once George Costanza needed out of a relationship he made his own issues and neurosis the core reason for breaking up.
It's not you; it's me.
How brilliant. One can imagine the recuperative thoughts of George's exes: "He doesn't want me anymore. He's changed, not me."
I think this pithy ploy would be a great paradigm for a way out of society's dysfunctional relationship with the bloated federal government and concomitant welfare state. If more of us would have our attitudes about the proper role of government changed and prefer liberty and a freer society, more of us would have one thing to say to those vote-catching demagogues (to borrow from Hayek) who, at every election cycle, inevitably come pandering with all manner of goodies and handouts and incentives to not pay for our own wants and needs.
"We need to talk. I've changed. We need to end this relationship. It's not you; it's me."
There will always be a number of people disinterested in changing, who have no compunction about being part of the welfare state. The key, it seems, is persuading that larger number of people who know better but are tempted to follow the siren song that sings: Don't worry about it. It's some other part of the budget that's the problem. The more of these folks who don't become part of the welfare state, the better.
Consider the unsettling number of people who want the deficit cut but do not, of course, want their entitlements cut. And gander for a moment at the recent backlash of public sector union members and teachers who believe they have a God-given and constitutionally-guaranteed right to not pay for their own health insurance. Once enough (too many) people fall into the entitlement machinations of the redistributive welfare State that State becomes a self-perpetuating machine. It's a simple matter of mathematics: attach the financial self-interest of enough voters to entitlements and those same voters will never break off their dysfunctional relationship with their nanny state.
For sure, it would be very good to get more limited government, pro-liberty citizens elected to offices of power. The hope there is, I suppose, to initiate political momentum and reform from within the government. Rand Paul's recent election to the senate, for example, is encouraging. As much as I respect Senator Paul, however, it needs stressed that he is now part of Leviathan at large and is therefore surrounded by the institutional incentives to prop up and prod along the welfare state.
The State is the State, no matter who is pulling its levers. The key is to reduce the levers, not rely on who is pulling (or not pulling) the levers. (The only real reason we pay attention to that Man Behind The Curtains is that he has the power to confiscate our lives, liberty, and property at his fingertips.)
Paul shows signs of being the recalcitrant contrarian to the welfare State (thank God), but the sobering lesson of history teaches that depending on getting enough Rand Pauls into the system to change the system is a political pipe dream. By its own volition, the State will always want to grow and slither and slide past whatever constitutional and legal limits are placed in its path. The only viable manner of stopping it, or slowing it down, at least, is to starve it of its most fundamental and renewable resource: votes.
Whatever kind of relationship a majority of Americans want with their government, their vote-lusting and reelection obsessed politicians will provide for them. It's not an easy task, for sure, as more and more people are drawn into the entitlement siren song of the free lunch (mixed metaphors allowed this late in a post), thus creating a vested fiscal self-interest in the perpetuation and growth of the welfare state.
It also was not an easy task to advance the abolition of slavery or, for that matter, individual liberty with centuries of customs and established authorities determined for the status quo. Ideas and persuasion changed public sentiment, and public sentiment eventually carried the day. And besides, the opportunities to engage and converse are everywhere--who isn't aware that something is really screwed up out there?
Come on, if the delightfully despicable George Costanza can muster the chutzpah to end dysfunctional relationships and reclaim his freedom, we should too.
