Change The Debate

In fact, we need to change everything- but really and truly, we need to have a sober, responsible and more importantly sane discussion on the role of government in this country and the amount of money that we spend on it. I shy away from Conservatism in this country because so much of mainstream Conservative thinking has an inherent amount of hypocrisy in it: you can't preach small government yet insist the government mandate social behavior or legislate social issues. Consistency in your principles counts for something in my book and it makes me crazy when I hear self-righteous sermons on the virtues of small government and how wasteful government actually is while simultaneously supporting laws that control a woman's reproductive system or tell people who they can and cannot marry. If you're for less government, be for less government- but that means you have to stand by that across the board.

I'm coming around to the notion that the last truly principled Conservative in this country was probably Barry Goldwater.

In the meantime, people have lost their minds: government all of it is illegal and should be abolished. Nothing, nothing at all- get rid of all of it, people say- which to me, confuses the debate we should actually be having. Centralized bureaucracy in Washington D.C. is the real enemy here. Republicans may fulminate about too much government and too much regulation, but the fact of the matter is that police, teachers, nurses, border patrol agents don't necessarily make bank and do hard work that needs doing out here in the boonies. The faceless bureaucrats in D.C. are where the waste is truly generated, in my book.

Break it up a little bit! Do we need a Department of Agriculture in Washington D.C. where they do little to no farming? In the age of modern communications technology is it necessary to have the Department of the Interior on the coast, nowhere near the Interior? Break up the bureaucrat factory! The biggest problem of all is that we have a lot of waste to cut off the government and a lot of it is clustered near the top- can we trust those at the top to cut from the top down? I don't think so…

And here's where my change of thinking comes in: a long talk with one of our Lieutenants here at work- a big union guy, even though he's Merit Exempt now and thus can't be in the union anymore made me reconsider my somewhat harsh judgment of the role of public sector unions. To be sure, there's a lot to criticize still, and I stand by my critique: but someone, somewhere has to hold the political class accountable for the cuts they make. Someone, somewhere has to point out that the streets need to be safe, the schools need teachers and the hospitals need nurses, but do the people at the top have salaries they can justify? With some serious institutional reforms, I think public sector unions could be a valuable tool to mobilize people who matter in this debate and give them a voice.

Of course, no one actually wants to change anything, anywhere if they don't have to.