The totalitarian and oppressive heavy hand of the federal government is coming to get you. Or maybe it’s extending a helping hand and getting you through a tough time in your life. When asking Americans about their attitude towards government, either response is likely. Is one correct? President Reagan once took a side by saying, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Conversely, President Kennedy once said, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do with your country.” Each president contributed to our national discourse with their respective statements, and modern politicians arguing for one sentiment or the other are easy to find.
The reasoning behind ‘government is inherently bad’ is shadowed by another prominent debate: gun control or gun rights. Often, those who support “gun grabbing” policies and sentiment use similar reasoning, in blaming guns for the product they produce. What if we take the other side, and say that guns are a tool with the user responsible for the good or the evil of the results? In other words, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. It’s easy to take that reasoning and say, “government doesn’t kill people, people kill people.”
The fact is, guns and the government share many similarities in how they are used. They also share these things with hammers. You can build a house with a hammer, or you can bash in someone’s cranium. You can feed or protect your family with a gun, or you can murder someone. We, collectively, can use our government to accomplish great and lofty goals, or we can destroy our economy and harm our citizens (or the economies and citizens of other nations). The reaction that says government is bad and must be destroyed is the same argument that guns are bad and must be taken away. Is the tool the problem, or the user of the tool?
Common sense logic says a tool is nothing more than that, a tool. When it comes to our federal government, it is a large and powerful tool that can cause a great deal of damage when improperly used. President Kennedy believed it could be used for good, and the politics of his era agree. In the decades surrounding his presidency, we built a massive and economically powerful interstate system with our government as a tool. We built a social safety net in the form of Medicare and Medicaid, and although flawed, it is easy to find citizens who agree they are good ideas and have been saved from bankruptcy or worse because of those programs. We built up the greatest economic structure the world has ever known through a complex system of trade laws, subsidies, and foreign policy.
Your political ideology shouldn’t matter. Use the best tool for the job. While it is debatable just how useful a tool the government can be for any given job, saying the tool is unusable in the first place hamstrings and weakens us as a nation. It’s like pounding in the nails of your house using a screwdriver because you don’t like hammers. If government is working for evil, then grab the controls and use it for good. Informing yourself on issues and electing politicians who acknowledge its usefulness is a place to start.
