The Autocrat in Shadow: The Problem of Big Government
Big government is tempting. It is not difficult to understand why one might turn to bureaucracy to address issues. Government is easy to use, powerful, and in a better position to directly influence events than is the subtlety of the free market, state government, and the individual. Government can mandate, oversee, and enforce; one may be convinced that problems are effectively combated through the use of this prominent public body. It is true, granted, that government has a legitimate role in the affairs of the people—a complex society requires complex governance—but when government becomes too large—when one succumbs to the tempting notion that it can solve more and more concerns—serious problems ensue. And the larger the government, the more catastrophic the problems.
No course of recent events is more compelling in this respect than the onslaught of scandals that has engulfed our capital. The administration has—and this is not hyperbole—been going through the mud one day at a time, unsure of what will flare up next, bewildered at why the usually sympathetic media has abandoned the president it had exalted for nearly five years, while attempting to hide or scoff at its own blatant failures. The problem is partly incompetence, something even White House officials have owned up to in the past few days (a senior official anonymously stated last week: "We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It’s actually closer to us being idiots.") The greater element of this is that portions of the administration are evidently drunk on their own power.
Take the IRS scandal. If you don’t know the details of this controversy, here is a synopsis: for a significant part of President Obama’s first term, the IRS inappropriately targeted conservative political groups. Tea Party groups were particularly hunted; their applications for tax exempt status were delayed for months or years, they were sent intrusive and irregular questionnaires, and they were discriminated against solely on the basis of their organizations’ names (e.g. "Patriot," "Constitution," "Tea Party," and the like). Religious groups, including some Baptist organizations, were also subjected to improper scrutiny. Some individuals who donated to the Romney campaign had their businesses audited, their bank records checked, and were forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees fending off the IRS—which to date has found no crime in these individuals’ financial affairs. These actions on the part of the IRS have received widespread condemnation from media of both parties. The controversy now centers on who knew what, and when (whether or not Mr. Obama was aware of these doings during the 2012 campaign is as of yet still unknown).
For little reason other than the advancement of those in power, our government unfairly and likely unlawfully targeted individuals, groups, and political bodies; these entities were exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech, expression, and press. The fact that, in the past few years, some liberal groups were granted tax-exempt status by the IRS in three weeks, and some conservative groups were granted status after several years (having first filled out questionnaires with questions ranging from "what do you say in your prayers" to "what books have you been reading") is unconscionable, and I’m not being melodramatic.
One should note that the term "big government" does not necessarily entail physical size, but rather the mentality of "bigness." "Bigness" here is not limited to government activity: it is the literal mindset of the government, how important it feels, and how equipped it feels to influence the lives of citizens. While "big government" is very much an entity of physical power, it is equally one of psychological power—either on the people, or on itself. This kind of "bigness" is not limited to Democratic presidencies: a major component of the controversy that disgraced Richard Nixon was his use of the IRS to target liberal organizations.
Unfortunately, the toxicity circling Washington’s tax administration is not the only example of big government problems. The more obvious (and no less egregious) abuse of power is found in the AP phone records scandal. The basic issue there was as follows: the Justice Department, on the premise of "national security," spied on the phone records, communications, and other activities of numerous reporters from the Associated Press, who were involved in a news story regarding a foiled terror plot in Yemen. Though ordinarily the publication of this story would have posed a legitimate national security concern, AP voluntarily withheld the story until it received reports from two major government agencies noting that its publication would not endanger American interests. This is exacerbated by the fact that, despite pleas from the Bush administration about "national security," numerous media outlets reported on similar subjects, and no spying from the government ensued. Recent reports have indicated that a journalist’s personal email account was hacked without just premise (proof of criminality), and that the sole reason was the fact that he had been doing investigative journalism on a sensitive subject.
This is, once again, a blatant contradiction of the Constitution: the First Amendment explicitly forbids "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Neither the AP reporters nor the investigative journalist had violated their constitutional boundaries; somehow, the government felt like it could. This is not appropriate for a society dedicated to the freedom described in its foundational documents. The government responsible for these acts is not self-disciplined, it is not well-kept or tamed, and it has chillingly overstepped the power ascribed to it by the Founders. Corrupted by its own self-image—that of the mediator and force of greater good, or the projection of the ideological beliefs of those elected—it has not only bypassed the nuance of federal law, but has threatened the integrity of core values that define the institutions of that law.
What the American government has forgotten is its purpose, and its origins. Its purpose is not to advance an ideology, ensure political gain, determine how the press will function, or judge which of our citizenry is politically acceptable and which is not. The government has no party. It is bound by the Constitution, a nonpartisan document aware of the dangerous tendencies of individuals offered power, and calculated with the deliberate intention to constrain those tendencies. The government’s purpose is to be humble, to engage the public with humility and servile conduct, and to recognize that it serves the people according to their stated terms. It is to understand that it is a body of officials, elected and supported by the people, who are subject to the people’s whims. The president is first citizen, restrained by careful limitations; his cabinet is likewise controlled. When these people are blinded by the vastness of their power, and regard the Constitution as a petty nuisance, these people must go.
In all, these scandals constitute yet another test of the strength of our republic. The government designed by those Founders (to whom all politicians refer) is a government cemented in the understanding that human desire, for better or worse, would corrupt the noble institutions espoused by Enlightenment thinkers. The Founders devised a system that fused the high-flying ideological notions that "all men are born free," "all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights," and "all men are entitled to life, liberty, and property" with practical, perceptive, and strict constraints on the propensities of humankind. If we forget these intentions, and conclude that the presses of our own time supersede these checks crafted for men of all times, then we may as well consign ourselves to the slow descent into tyrannical governance. I hope that our leaders are vigilant enough to recognize the immediate need to root out these scandals from the eyes of the people and the hands of the state.
"And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."