Hell, just 10 short months ago, the world came to an end. At least that's what all the folks who made a killing selling us yet another apocollapse kept saying. Of course, to milk every last gullible bonehead of their savings, those folks are busy recalculating the Mayan calendar to find where they went wrong. The apocollapse may yet be in our future...again.
Meantime, the folks who brought you the NSA and its attendant police state are doing everything they can to make St. John's Revelation come true...or at least their interpretation of it, which they've spent centuries selling to us non-thinkers. But at least we can toss St. Malachy's list of popes, since the new one isn't Peter of Rome and instead of leading the flock to safety in times of trouble, he's leading them right into global western empire. WWJD?
So here we sit, trying to make sense of all the non sequiturs that pass for headlines there days. For instance, the US will institute 'Obamacare' next week, and folks are just getting around to figuring out that Congress excepted itself and the average family will pay more for healthcare and get less for it. And you expected anything less from a government program?
See, here's the thing. People have been horn-swaggled into looking to government to solve social issues, not realizing that governments have their own agendas that don't necessarily match up with the public good. Sure, it feels good to have welfare programs and social services and aid to families and universal healthcare, but the reality is that it inevitably bankrupts the nation and the programs do little to nothing to address the problems for which they were set up.
Take welfare, for instance. Makes the heart feel good that society can assist those in need. In the old days, there were private charities and religious institutions that performed that function and did it fairly efficiently. In steps government and soon taxes go up, there are systemic abuses and entire generations of people become wholly dependent on government (read your taxes) largess. The system is rife with waste and handouts to people who really don't need them, but it serves one important purpose: it creates an entire voting bloc that will vote for anyone who guarantees the gravy train won't stop.
How about Child Protective Services (CPS)? Now here's a real gem of government slime. While it feels good to think that there is an agency set up to help families, specifically children in need, the reality is far from perfect. Instead of performing a valuable service, CPS has instead become a vehicle to drive a government wedge into family life. And that's on the good side. Furthermore, it is a make-work factory for useless social workers and other busy-bodies who have studied 'child development' without the benefit of actually having kids. Finally, at its worst, CPS is a kidnapping ring to steal babies from people under the flimsiest of excuses to adopt out to homosexuals who obviously aren't going to get them any other way.
Show me a government agency that functions the way it was intended and I'll show you how 2+2=5. They all serve only government interests while advertising themselves as do-gooders to assuage the guilt of society at large who feel like they should be doing something to help the less fortunate.
In the end, all these agencies do is drive up taxes, support a bunch of folks with degrees and training that wouldn't earn them a rusty dime in the real world of productive labor and give government a dozen different routes into the private lives and affairs of the citizenry.
The result you get from all this happy non-sense is just what you see in the US and EU: cratering economies, surveillance, a plethora of police of all kinds, and half of the populace not working while the other half is grossly underemployed and overworked to pay for it all. The productive folks see half or more of their paychecks vanish in taxes and fees to support the legions of useless eaters called government employees. The government must set up surveillance to ostensibly check for cheaters, but ultimately to ensure the productive half of society doesn't start buying a lot of rope and looking for lamp posts.
There was a time when families watched out for their own. By installing government agencies in the middle, families are being destroyed at an alarming rate because individuals no longer feel responsible for their kin. Instead, they figure they are paying through the nose for some bureaucrat to do the job for them. At the same time, government finds dozens of little holes to insinuate itself into every aspect of our lives - from how much flush your toilet has to what kind of light bulb you can buy. All so some group of bleeding hearts somewhere can say they have achieved a victory over (fill in the blank...poverty, ecology, et cetera ad nauseum).
Government has three legitimate functions: prosecute criminal activity (with a victim other than one's self), operate customs and border controls, and mount a defense in the case of invasion. That's it. Everything else is a gross violation of individual liberty just begging to happen, not to mention heinous crimes against the dignity of humans everywhere.
Next time you hear someone say, "There oughtta be a law," slap them out of their trance. If that doesn't work, march them to a government mental health facility. That'll cure them right fast.
The measure of a great society is not how much you can steal from the productive part of society at the point of a gun to support the useless part. Rather, a great society is measured by how much government stays the hell out of people's lives and lets them get on with it. Government do-goodie agencies perpetuate misery. There has never been one that did anything good over the long term. All power will be abused. You can depend on that. Thus, it's better to keep power away from governments at all costs. They are dangerous and destructive.
After all, Hitler lived up to his campaign promises. And he was an animal-loving vegetarian painter, too. Now-a-days, he'd have a government job as a nutritionist while pulling down grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
