We have all talked around the purpose of government for weeks. So with President Obama's speech today and the anniversary of 9/11 looming, let's talk about the purpose/role of government for a bit.
What is the the purpose/role of Government?
Is it to protect the nation from external enemies only? Is it to take on those jobs in maintaining the infrastructure that are really too large for local governments to do? (I'm old enough to remember traveling from Texas to Louisiana and seeing the massive difference in road construction in Texas compared to the dangerously passable roads in Louisiana)
Is it to guarantee rights? If so which rights? Constitutional, state,local?
Who decides and how do they decide?
Is it to stay out of our local politics? For instance, would we want a national school system such as countries in Europe have? If not then should local school districts rely solely on local tax based funds? Would that inequality not fly in the face of the core values we say we belief in; one being equal opportunity?
National health care system? We already have a third of one with medicare, medicaid, and social security. Has health care become so big that local politics can no longer sustain health care aid without governmental help?
What's the government's role in the economy? I personally was horrified when I saw all the bailout monies being distributed and more often than not without the transparency those kinds of funds would engender. But was that the government's role? Well the banks, car dealerships etc no matter thier particular ideological bent were happy to see some relief.
So does government only intervene when it looks as if things are getting critical?
And, briefly I'd like to close with just a comment about the absolute hideous disrespect for the office of president news pundits spew from their mouths as the vilest bile. People forget that it is the OFFICE not so much the MAN (as many who get elected have discovered as well---see comments by Lyndon Johnson about what he could get done as president vs when he was senator) that defines what can and cannot be done by government.
In a scene from the now defunct television show, West Wing, the long time friend of the president came by for a visit and continued addressing him as 'Mr. President'. The president said, 'Oh we have been friends since grade school, you can drop the title.'
To whit his long time friend replied, "it is not so much for you I use the title as to remind me where I stand and where either of us like to feel the constraints or not, this is still the Oval Office and you, my long time friend, remains the occupier of this office, Mr. President. I do not want to forget where I am standing in here.' (paraphrased because the memory is full of cracks sometimes.)
I don't expect anyone to address all of the above but thought that if we could 'break it down' as they say in choreographer, we might come up with some interesting responses.
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We're just having a bit of fun here...so if we didn't have money then what would we have? How would the society hold together and I"m assuming that at it's core a sustatinable society is the goal, otherwise I"m going to go oil down my .410 shotgun and do some practicing.
Alex: Bingo! The devil is, as they say, in the details.
Beyond that, I would like someone to tell me. Someone not named Philos, Phaedo or GordonO (who lives in Brazil). It's surely not to de-regulate banks and Wall Street to the brink of catastrophe.
baboons have governments, humans usually use the same model.
i like democracy, in principle. but it does need citizen quality people. this is lacking in the usa, so far. it appears that the level of human intelligence makes democracy possible if people are raised in it, but out of reach unless very special circumstances arise.
so you can talk endlessly, but there are not enough 'cqp' to actually do anything.
You have a lot of good company that has, overtime, argued that a functioning democracy depends on a thorough going education, John Dewey among others.
I've always been a glass half full kind of gal, myself:)
So, government is about collecting taxes and enforcing laws, basically. The taxes pay for stuff we couldn’t or wouldn’t do individually: infrastructure (transport, schools, hospitals) and services (police, army, dog wardens). The laws range from ‘nanny’ laws like drink-driving and TV licences and ‘big brother’ laws like those that record airline passengers and internet traffic to track terrorists to ‘international laws’ that guarantee our borders, out there in the ocean and up there in the skies. They also enforce those estimable laws that govern our worst behaviour, like murder and incest. It’s not enough to just wave a poster and shout ‘Down with that sort of thing!’ Government passes the laws, builds the prisons, pays the prison guards, and employs social workers to get prisoners rehabilitated into society on release.
It’d be nice if government could be Santa Claus and sometimes it is - like the EU was for our farmers and our women workers. But it’s also got to be about a different perspective, like when our Government was talking to terrorists on both sides to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland. Who else would have done that - talking to both sides, circumventing generations of hostility and creating a vision of a different potential future - or could have done that? Not me, all I did was vote them in! It was dangerous to do that then, public feeling was so volatile that the government negotiatons were kept totally secret from us citizens for fear we’d rip their treacherous hearts out. Government: being able to see beyond the immediate, proximate, current demand to adopt another, broader perspective.
Government, it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it!
BTW I was in Dublin at the World Conference of Conflict and Human Co-Existence about that time and things were so tense none of us were able to make it into Northern Ireland to visit. Lovely visit and I look forward to returning when I was not so busy working.
" Society can no more exist without government, in one form or another, than man without society. The political, then, is man's natural state. It is the one for which his Creator formed him, into which he is impelled irresistibly, and the only one in which his race can exist and all his faculties be fully developed.
It follows that even the worst form of government is better than anarchy; and that individual liberty or freedom must be subordinate to whatever power may be necessary to protect society against anarchy within or destruction from without.
Just in proportion as a people are ignorant, stupid, debased, corrupt, exposed to violence within and danger without, the power necessary for government to possess, in order to preserve society against anarchy and destruction, becomes greater and greater, and individual liberty less and less, until the lowest condition is reached, when absolute and despotic power becomes necessary on the part of the government, and individual liberty becomes extinct.
So, on the contrary, just as a people rise in the scale of intelligence, virtue, and patriotism, and the more perfectly they become acquainted with the nature of government, the ends for which it was ordered, and how it ought to be administered, the power necessary for government becomes less and less, and individual liberty greater and greater."
I found that to be interesting and perfect for your post.
and/or 'oppressive' central authority...In short, it sounds good but the emphasis is misplaced hence, making it NOT a good example for your inquiry:
"John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was the 7th Vice President of the United States and a leading Southern politician from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century. Calhoun was an advocate of slavery, states' rights, limited government, and nullification. He was the second man to serve as Vice President under two administrations, (as a Democratic-Republican under John Quincy Adams and as a Democrat under Andrew Jackson); the first Vice President to have been born after the American Revolution; and the first Vice President to resign from office. Calhoun briefly served in the South Carolina legislature. There he wrote legislation making South Carolina the first state to adopt universal suffrage for white men.
Although Calhoun died nearly 11 years before the start of the American Civil War, he was an advocate of secession. Nicknamed the "cast-iron man" for his determination to defend the causes in which he believed, Calhoun supported state's rights and nullification, under which states could declare null and void federal laws which they deemed to be unconstitutional. He was an outspoken proponent of the institution of slavery, which he famously defended as a "positive good" rather than as a "necessary evil".[2] His rhetorical defense of slavery was partially responsible for escalating Southern threats of secession in the face of mounting abolitionist sentiment in the North. Calhoun was one of the "Great Triumvirate" or the "Immortal Trio" of statesmen, along with his Congressional colleagues Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. Calhoun served in the House of Representatives (1810–1817) and the United States Senate (1832-1843). He was appointed Secretary of War (1817–1824) under James Monroe and Secretary of State (1844–1845) under John Tyler." (From Wikipedia)
When he delivered the speech he wasn't holding an office of any kind and died within two years of making the speech as part of the debates which were raging on about whether the slave trade and slavery should be abolished and whether staes admitted to the union should be "free" or "slave"........
Also tipping my hat to Ron for pointing out that John C Calhoun was not the best example of the point I was trying to make. I do have a bit of a bias since I was the first woman to be recipient of a grad school fellowship set up by the Calhoun Trust/Foundation. Lest you think this was ancient history...not...1991. (I was also the first woman hired in my political science department in 1993 after the then dean said he expected me to maintain the long established decorum of white gracious behavior at the school. I was aghast and wondered if he thought I was going to jump up on the table and entertain him with a mean chachacha!)
Scanner, I appreciate your clarity about how/why states cannot always do what is needful and necessary. As the saying goes: the devil is in the details.
Again many thanks to all of you.