(This series examines how politicians, pundits and other people of influence abuse words and use false logic labeling or doublespeak to distort public perceptions. Part I, Propaganda and Plunder, showed how even simple words like “clear” and “clean” were twisted to promote harmful policies. Part II, Socialism ≠ Social Disease, showed how the word “socialism” has been demonized by putative Conservatives.)

One particularly annoying habit of so-called Conservatives – people I call Consumatives since they’re more concerned with consumption than conservation – is their endless trashing of government. They insist that government never does anything right and that private industry always provides better products and services, and does it more cheaply.

One of the worst offenders is Grover Norquist who authored this infamous quote:

"My goal is to cut government down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.”

This behavior of Grover and his ilk qualifies as hectoring; a word that has fallen into disuse. It means to treat with insolence; to threaten; to bully; to torment. Perhaps this particular kind of hectoring, this bullying of government, should be called grovering.

The Cowboy Way

That foolish quip begs the question why anyone would want to be the head of anything so worthless. But of course when it comes to trying to refute sophistry and sloganeering, logic isn't of much use with acolytes.

Unfortunately for all of us, this idea of government as the problem was inextricably linked in the minds of Reagan and his acolytes to both economic darwinism and the cowboy mythology I exposed in my post Unmasking American Myths. It's no coincidence that the two recent presidents who liked to portray themselves as cowboys put this Voodoo Economics into practice.

The Cowboy Way – unleashing unrestrained jungle-ethic capitalists to plunder a supposedly self-correcting free-market – has led to a disaster of trillion-dollar proportions. Only ignorance – or something much more sinister – accounts for failing to anticipate an outcome as predictable as loosing my pet goat in an African savannah.

It was also predictable that what little government oversight remained would fail, too, since both Reagan and George W. Bush put people in charge of agencies like the SEC who did not believe in the role of those agencies. To appoint such people was either ignorance – or worse, it was done intentionally to prove yet again government was worthless.

And predictably, Consumatives – who caused the problem in the first place with their demand for privatization and deregulation – point to this as just another example of how the government can’t do anything right.

The fault is not in our stars

Consumatives are so relentless in their grovering, many have come to believe what they say is true. The facts say otherwise.

The truth is the government does get it right far more often than it's given credit for, especially in agencies run by experienced people who believe in the mission of their agencies – rather than by political hacks who don’t.

NASA is a shining example of government accomplishment. It continues to succeed at difficult tasks despite the mewling of its critics.

Politicians of every stripe are fond of prefacing their remarks about some difficult task with “if we could put a man on the moon in ten years –”. It’s hard to imagine a more difficult task – or a greater success than that government program.

When the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was first deployed with its out-of-focus mirrors, government was mocked again – though the error was the fault of a private contractor.

Our “incapable” government corrected the error by fitting the HST with “glasses”; and ever since, it has been sending back truly remarkable pictures.

In fact, the same “incapable” government has successfully completed an incredibly difficult and dangerous space shuttle mission that restored the Hubble and will keep it in operation until 2014 – long after it was scheduled to be decommissioned.

Reasonable people may disagree about whether our space program is worth the investment and whether it provided for the common defense or promoted the general welfare. But what can’t be denied is the government succeeded beyond all expectations in a remarkably difficult endeavor that has added considerably to the knowledge of mankind.

Lights-out manufacturing redefined

What also can’t be denied is that the space program is infinitely more successful than the colossal failure of private firms in the financial sector. Some will say that’s an apples and oranges comparison, but how about the auto industry? While the space program has succeeded in large part because it enthusiastically embraced technological advances, the auto industry has failed in large part because it has not.

Instead, government pressure forced the auto industry to adopt such important safety innovations as radial tires, seat belts and disc brakes. And had government not forced mileage standards on the auto industry – standards the industry fought tooth and nail – we would be even more dependent on foreign oil today.

Even when the auto industry embraced new technology, they failed, some would say because they embraced it for all the wrong reasons. For instance, GM adopted robotics, but because of former CEO Roger Smith’s decision to adopt lights-out manufacturing, robots were expected to do something they could not do – replace human workers altogether.

As a result, GM lost billions of dollars, and also lost any last vestiges of goodwill among its blue-collar workers. Love him or hate him, Michael Moore’s documentary Roger and Me was perceptive and prophetic about these matters.

The decline of the American auto industry was also predictable – read The Reckoning by David Halberstam published in 1977. There is certainly no cause to gloat about losing the industry that once symbolized America's greatness, but the bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM gives a whole new ironic meaning to lights-out manufacturing.

The blind who lead the blind

There may be no worse example of the failure of privatization than the "leaner, meaner" policies pushed by Cheney and Rumsfeld in pursuit of an all-volunteer military. Under that policy, tasks were transferred to the private sector and billions were overspent on sweetheart deals with companies like Halliburton to provide meals, laundry and a host of other services once done at much lower cost by servicemen.

But even though we overpaid obscenely, we still did not get what we paid for. To cite only one outrageous example, it is reported that as many as eighteen people have been electrocuted in Iraq because of faulty wiring installed by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. 

Another area in which private industry has failed miserably is healthcare, where the US spends more per capita than any other country, but ranks with third-world countries in some measures of health. That subject will be addressed in Part IV - Healthcare Hucksters.

It is puzzling why Consumatives seem so bent on belittling and destroying the government that defends, protects and educates them, that builds and maintains the roads they drive on, that provides unemployment benefits and food stamps when things get desperate, and provides healthcare and a subsistence living for them in their old age.

Why do they do this? Perhaps it’s simple ignorance; perhaps they simply don’t know any better. Certainly, that’s the conclusion to be drawn from a rant by actor Craig T. Nelson on the Glenn Beck Show:

"I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No. They gave me hope, they gave me encouragement, and they gave me a vision."

Maybe people like Nelson and Beck should think twice about how many good things the government does and how many ways the government has helped them in their lives.

That goes double for people like Dick Cheney, Phil Gramm and Dick Armey, nasty little men who trash government despite the fact that they’ve drawn a government check most of their lives. Maybe their grovering of government is displaced self-loathing. Maybe it isn't government they hate so much as it is themselves.

©2009 Tom Cordle

(Thanks to the brilliant Sandra Miller Stephens for coining "tonguage".)