Over my seven decades on the blue planet, I have thought about politics a lot, so It’s not often that I truly learn something new, but I was recently surprised by one article with several things I hadn’t thought about. At least the ideas had never crystalized in my mind.
The article I read was ABOUT an opinion piece in the Washington Post. I’m not a subscriber to the Washington Post, not even the online version, so I can’t read the article. But the headline and the subhead were a revelation.
The op-ed was by Ruth Marcus from February 4. The headline was “Trump 2.0: The most damaging first two weeks in presidential history” and the subhead was “Trump’s second term is all about curtailing government’s power and reach.”
For me the surprise is that someone could write the headline and the subhead unironically. It was an epiphany for me that there are people who think “curtailing the government’s power and reach” is “damaging.”
I love America. Not the geography. Not the government. I love the IDEA that the founders of our country had: that “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”; that “all men are created equal”; that our government is “of, by, and for the people.” I could go on, but the idealism of the founders is what has made the USA the greatest, most powerful force for freedom the earth has ever seen.
America is about individual liberty based, not on race, class, wealth or brute force, but on a commitment to the ideal that every human being is valuable and should have as much freedom and agency as possible. By definition that means the government should be as small and non-intrusive as possible to allow the greatest freedom and empowerment of every individual citizen. Has America always lived up to the ideal? Of course not. Human beings are flawed and the old ways sometime hold sway. The Old World has never fully caught up with the idealism of the New, and even many countries in the western hemisphere have failed to learn the lessons in liberty America’s founders enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and the Gettysburg Address. I add the last one from the 19th century because of phrases like “a nation conceived in liberty.”
Because I love America and want to see it embrace its promise as a beacon of freedom in the world, I have long wanted to see “government’s power and reach” curtailed, but the juxtaposition of the headline and the subhead in the WaPo op-ed showed me that not everyone thinks limited government is good. That shouldn’t have been a revelation to me, but it was.
A key line from the WaPo article was highlighted by an article at TownHall.com: “No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly.”
So reducing the size and oppressive power of the government is “damage to the nation”? That was another epiphany for me, because it has always been obvious to me that the bigger government gets, the worse it is. The bigger the government, the more oppressive, more suffocating for individual citizens it becomes. Limiting the government does not “damage…the nation.” Limiting the government sets the nation and its citizens free to innovate, create and explode the combined economic power of the nation, raising millions out of poverty. More government equal less freedom and more poverty.
Pardon me for being slow to pick up on this: leftists think the government IS the nation! If you “curtail the government’s power and reach,” you are “damaging the nation.” This idea is so foreign to me as to be nonsensical, but obviously a lot of people think that way and a lot of them are Washington Post readers living within driving distance of the US Capitol.
But that was not the last of the surprises for me. The TownHall.com article had a lot of great comments from readers. One comment began with the line: “These people see Government as God.”
I actually have said that myself, but in the context of this WaPo op-ed, it took on greater resonance. For the left, politics is a religion and government is a God who demands ever more power and sway over men. That goes a long way toward explaining the unhinged behavior of Democrats in the face of President Trump’s historic reshaping of government. To me, he is restoring the promise of what the founders envisioned, but to the left, he’s killing God; his actions are HERESY.
There’s a reason why leftists hate religion – Marxists always outlaw it. There can be no god but the state.
