Ten years ago, in the early days of the Intramuralist, we penned the beginning of this post. I\u2019m fascinated by its continued relevance\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEverything\u2019s bigger in America. We\u2019ve got the biggest cars. The biggest houses. The biggest companies. The biggest food. And finally, the biggest people. America has now become the fattest nation in the world.\u201d <\/em> (From Morgan, in \u201cSuper Size Me\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fattest nation in the world. I wonder: <\/em>is bigger always better?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the wake of prodigious deficit spending, we continue to hear the government convening in order to decipher what new legislation to enact.\u00a0They speak of which programs to add and where to increase spending.\u00a0Let me be the first to say, much legislation supports what many consider to be a good program.\u00a0But question:\u00a0when do we employ our discernment skills?\u00a0In other words, when do Democrats and Republicans examine which programs are no longer effective or which do we simply have no resources to fund \u2014 even if it\u2019s good?\u00a0Once a program is funded, does that mean it is subsidized (or super-sized) for life?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The size of our government has increased exponentially under most all current and recent executive and legislative branches.\u00a0Few laws are rescinded.\u00a0Hence, our \u201cfat\u201d nation now controls how we park, how we drive, what we drive, what we eat, what we drink, how we behave in public, the level of noise we can make, what drugs are available, what words can be said on television, our guns, our banks, the car manufacturers, interest rates, dairy standards, the animal population, what others can say in regard to our health, what they can say in regard to our character, what must be taught, what must be preserved, what is extinct, how to vote, how to marry, how to own, how to rent, how to buy, how to sell, how to operate a boat, what insurance to obtain, the toll roads, parks, how many can sleep in a hotel room, when and where you can buy alcohol, how much income tax to pay, sales tax, gas tax, real estate tax, personal property tax, estate tax, excise tax, utilities tax, payroll tax, dividends tax, motor oil tax, gift tax, amusements tax, consumption tax, yada yada yada.\u00a0That looks on the plus size to me.\u00a0Let us say it differently:\u00a0our government is big! And that is due to both Democrat and Republican-led efforts.\u00a0That\u00a0is\u00a0due\u00a0to\u00a0multiple\u00a0administrations.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Is this what the Constitution intended? Big government? Control and influence in as many aspects as elected officials deem necessary? Where will they stop? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now ten years later, government continues to be super-sized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Such prompts me increased concern as heading into 2020, we witness the public flirtation with socialism. Why? Because Socialism would make government even bigger; hence, we ask: have we forgotten the historic dangers of super-sizing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wrote author Robert Tracinski two years ago in response to the younger generations\u2019 belief that socialism is positive as a whole:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat have they missed that they can believe that? Here\u2019s what they\u2019ve missed: the artificial famine in Ukraine, the Soviet Gulags, the forced deportation of Lithuanians, the persecution of Christians, China\u2019s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, the killing fields of Cambodia, North Korea\u2019s horrific prison camps and famines, the systematic impoverishment of Cuba, and now Venezuela\u2019s collapse into starvation and mass-murder\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s always someone who insists that it isn\u2019t fair to pin all of these crimes on \u2018socialism\u2019 because those examples weren\u2019t really socialism. The only \u2018real\u2019 socialism is the warm, fuzzy welfare-statism of a handful of innocuous Western European countries. This is a pretty obvious version of the No True Scotsman fallacy\u2026\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n [\u201cNo true Scotsman<\/strong> or appeal to purity<\/strong> is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample\u2026 (\u201cno true Scotsman would do such a thing”; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group.\u201d)<\/em>]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Pres. Bill Clinton\u2019s 1996 State of the Union address, encouraging a bipartisan approach, he said the following: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe know big government does not have all the answers. We know there’s not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means. The era of big government is over.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n With the size and debt of the federal government recently articulated as a significant problem plaguing our country today, I wonder if we\u2019ve forgotten the wisdom in Clinton\u2019s words… and the danger of being so big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Respectfully\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n AR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ten years ago, in the early days of the Intramuralist, we penned the beginning of this post. I\u2019m fascinated by its continued relevance\u2026 \u201cEverything\u2019s bigger in America. We\u2019ve got the biggest cars. The biggest houses. The biggest companies. The biggest food. And finally, the biggest people. America has now become the fattest nation in the world.\u201d (From Morgan, in \u201cSuper … <\/p>\n