The Long Break Down

So we have a relatively small band of Islamic Terrorists running around kidnapping Americans and other Westerners and beheading them, guys jumping the fence at the White House and running deep inside the building with no action taken by the Secret Service and we have Ebola virus now in the United States.  Not exactly the kind of situtations that instill great confidence in your Government recognizing threats and doing something about them quickly and efficiently.  And that is what likely led to this classic George Will diatribe Sunday on Fox News Channel:

Will: “Government is not competent. Frankly it’s not competent under Republicans or Democrats because it is always a monopoly and monopolies are not disciplined by market forces that are connected with reality. Teasing this segment, you asked “can we have faith in government?” I think we have much more to fear from excessive faith in government than from too little faith in government. You asked “can we trust the government to do its job?” What isn’t its job these days? I’ve just made a list. It’s fine-tuning the curriculum of our students k-12, monitoring sex on campuses, deciding how much ethanol we should put in our gas tanks, it’s designed our light bulbs, and it’s worried sick over the name of the Washington football team. Now this is a government that doesn’t know when to stop.”

“The distilled essence of progressivism is that government is a benign, disinterested force, that’s false, and that it’s stuffed with experts, really gifted at doing things. Republicans do this also. Democrats do it on domestic policy. Republicans brought us nation building, regime change. A common theme is the excessive faith in the skills of government.”

Of course, because this was on a Sunday morning news program, there was no further discussion of how Government might actually become a more responsive and effective entity--it was just on to the next panelist's talking points.  But perhaps its time that we have a little "national discussion" about how we stop having to ask "Who is in charge of this, and why haven't they been fired yet?"

George Will is correct, our Government tries to do too much, with too many departments and too much money.  Perhaps it's a good thing that discussion was held on Fox News because if it was on ABC or NBC there would have been a panelist ready to offer up the creation of a new Department of Government Oversight--complete with new employees, managers, department heads and a huge budget--that would replicate the work of 15 other departments in Washington--all in the name of "improving efficiency".

What do you say we demand that our government do a handful of things really well before allowing it to give itself more duties that it can't handle.