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Big Government is bad.
Oh really? Tell that to the Founding Fathers that produced the finest government structure in the history of the world. In case you think the phrase “big government is bad” is new, such as in the current health care debacle, it isn’t. Every time the Federal government tries to make a major change for an improvement we hear the same old cry. If you watch or read news, you hear some version of it almost daily and recently many times a day. Let’s tiptoe through the tulips of time and see how this all came about.
We heard it in the 1990s during the precious try by President Clinton for health care. Egads! Health care for everyone. Another significant time we heard the negative “Big government” was when President Lyndon Johnson practically had to break arms in Congress to pass the Omnibus Civil Rights bill. Horrors civil rights for everyone. The opposition in their usual fashion thought civil rights were only for certain people. Gee, I wonder what the Founding Fathers meant by “liberty and justice for all”?
The fur really flew when during September of 1957 Governor Faubus of Arkansas ordered the National Guard to bar nine black students from entering the all white high school in Little Rock. Three weeks later a federal court (big government) ordered the guardsmen be removed. Three days later President Eisenhower (of the then rational Republican Party) sent in the U.S. Army to finally get the nine black kids into school.
In 1935 the big bad government people were at it again trying to stop President Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security Act from passing. Yeah, terrible idea that people should save during their working years through a government program, so they could eat and have a roof over their heads when they retired.
“Goodness, Mildred, how far back does this go?” Well to quote Al Jolson, “Ya ain’t heard nothin’ yet folks.” The big bad government people don’t mind using the Fed when they have a bad idea. In 1900 a woman named Carry Nation (really) took up a hatchet and threatened imbibers in the saloons of Kansas. Carry become a hero and in 1917 the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. Prohibition. Manufacture, sale and consumption of alcohol was against the law in the good ole U.S. of A.
Here’s a statistic you might want to mull over. During the 16 years of Prohibition alcohol consumption was the highest per capita in U.S. history! The problem besides having more drunks around was that we funded illegal bootlegging operations of big time criminals, notably Alphonse Capone. Big Al and his buddies made millions and he went to jail eventually for not paying income taxes. What we did succeed in doing was building organized crime in America. Thanks Carry. Fortunately, one of President Roosevelt’s first acts in office in 1933 was to repeal Prohibition. Unfortunately we still haven’t learned the lesson and are funding organized crime in the billions of dollars now with our prohibition of drugs, which works as well as the alcohol idea did.
In the 1860s the conservative crowd had finally had it with the northern slave abolitionists, so we had a war and over half a million Americans killed each other. Big government wasn’t going to tell the cotton pickers they couldn’t have slavery. (By the way given today’s political climate and rhetoric it appears we are getting ready to have Americans start killing each other again.) I’m glad I’mdoesn'the side that doesn’t want to kill anybody.
Now to get to the nub of when and how this “Big government is bad” came about. Springing back to colonial times, after General Washington’s fine leadership in the Revolutionary War brought about victory he knew that it was only a matter of time before the British made another effort to reclaim the valuable colonies. In 1783 Britain signed the treaty acknowledging our independence. Men such as Washington and Jefferson knew that a strong centralized Federal government was the best deterrent against Britain showing the unity of the states.
As work proceeded on the Constitution two main themes emerged. One was to divide powers of the new government into legislative, judicial, and executive branches. Delegates from the states were well aware of the European governments and church with their kings, queens, and Popes living royally off the vast masses of powerless people.
The second was to have strong centralized power in the Federal government. It was at this point that the southern colonies balked. Their great fear was that the Federal government (big government) would abolish slavery and not only damage their economy, but end their way of life.
Having reached this impasse a gentlemen’s agreement was reached whereby no mention of slavery would be made for twenty years in Congress, where the laws would be made after ratification of the new government. This allowed the United States to be formed, but did not solve the problem of slavery for the abolitionists.
For fifty years after the agreement expired in 1810 various manipulations were carried out maintaining the status quo, principally in the way of adding new states to the Union as we moved in westward expansion. For each free state admitted one slave state had to be formed to maintain the balance in Congress. Ultimately this erupted into a civil war and over half a million Americans had to kill each other to force the South to abolish. It took another hundred years for the Omnibus Civil Right Act to really end the hangings and other despicable acts of conservatives.
I sometimes wonder, given the intransigence of positions, if we would have been better off on both sides, if we had separated into two nations back in 1860. Actually I have done the math on this and we would have approximately half our present population in each new country and the number of states almost evenly divided in number also. The liberal North could go its merry way as could the South in different directions of course.
The last straw dropped when in the 1990s Newt Gingrich announced his Contract with America, which declared that Republicans would no longer compromise. From the inception of our nation, some 220 years, compromise in government had been the single most important factor in passing legislation and getting things done. Anyone with half a brain on either side can see the situation that exists now. We are not solving problems and are adrift in dangerous waters. Unless the Republican Party can remake itself into something resembling say what it was in the Eisenhower years and congress begins to function rationally, we are on the path of the Roman Empire in the 400s. With all their military might they crumbled. If you think I am exaggerating this, I suggest you read a little history. And will someone please tell Carl Rove that patriotism is not a flag pin on his lapel. I lived through the Great Depression and World War II and saw the real thing.
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