Ever since the 1980s and 1990s, we’ve been dealing with government shutdowns. Or the threat of a government shutdown.
Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats. Presidents blame Congress, and Congress blames the President. The themes do not change. And neither do the evasions.
What nobody ever talks about is why we have the threats of shutdowns in the first place. There’s only one possible reason, and it’s the actual one: The government spends way, way more than it can afford, and that even a population taxed at 100 percent could ever manage to pay. We’re riding on debts and deficits as far as the eye can see, spending the money of people due to be born in 2300 or beyond. That’s what a $20 and $25 trillion dollar debt means, after all.
The Constitution was designed to be self-correcting. By going outside the bounds of limited government authorized by the U.S. Constitution, we created a permanent fiscal as well as a moral, political and social disaster.
There’s only one way to correct that disaster: Phase out most of the spending. Cut or repeal most of the federal departments immediately, and phase out Medicare and Social Security, which will eventually be gone anyway because they’re already bankrupt and unsustainable.
Debates should take place, even between parties, as to how to best go about doing this. But nobody even raises the issue. We call it a “swamp” but most of us have failed to identify the nature of what makes it a swamp. A swamp is where people lie to themselves, to each other, and to everyone else in their struggle not to know the obvious.
The swamp is us, because most of us encourage the evasions by taking a side with either of these hopelessly inept and corrupt, entrenched parties.
So long as we keep expecting more from government than it can or should deliver, dysfunction and ugly politics will be the norm.
It’s like watching a squabbling couple where both are to blame, and each claims the other is totally to blame. Just as those relationships and marriages never end well, this will not, either.
I say this not to be gloomy, but actually to offer hope. Because once we name the nature of the problem — no evasions, no mincing words — the way is clear to move toward individual rights, individual liberty, free market capitalism and an economic and moral prosperity like the world has never yet seen. It happened once (the 19th and early 20th centuries). We still ride on that diminishing wave, and it can happen again.
It’s up to us.
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