Government Is the Enemy
At a press conference on August 12,
1986, President Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the
English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” This
statement was the beginning of something, but it certainly was not the end, and
I’m sure Ronald Reagan would be appalled at how far the Republican Party has run
with this catchy bit of antigovernment rhetoric.
The message from Reagan was clear:
the government is inept, perhaps even harmful in its attempts to help American
citizens. But it also indicative of a fundamental conservative belief: namely,
that almost everything is better if left to the free market. And this is a
fundamental difference between the two major political parties. To Democrats,
government is the people’s tool to address sticky problems that the market either
ignores (i.e., limited access to health care) or exacerbates (i.e., pollution).
To Republicans, government is not only ineffective, but likely evil. Government
is the enemy. According to conservative lobbyist Grover Norquist, “My goal is
to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size
where we can drown it in the bathtub.” The difference in these perspectives led
humorist P. J. O’Rourke to comment, “The Democrats are the party that says
government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on
your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and
then they get elected and prove it.”
These different perspectives on
government have led to two very different approaches to solving problems. On the
left, this means passing legislation or taking executive action to address problems
like out-of-control health-care costs, millions of Americans without health
insurance, global warming, gun violence, economic inequality, crumbling
infrastructure, and the high cost of a college education. On the right, this
means literally trying to take health insurance from millions of Americans, pushing
for more fossil fuel production and consumption, giving tax breaks to the
wealthy (because taxes are evil), defunding the IRS (which only reduces
revenues and increases the national debt Republicans claim to abhor), kicking
the infrastructure can down the road (until “infrastructure week” became a sick
joke), and keeping the minimum wage as low as possible (it hasn’t changed since
2009).
Republicans generally believe that
a small government is good government. But this ignores one massive problem:
the abuses of authoritarian business entities such as multinational corporations.
This is not a new problem, and former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt
recognized this 110 years ago. Nothing has really changed in those years except
that the problem has gotten a lot larger.
In an address at the Coliseum in
San Francisco on September 14, 1912, when Roosevelt was running for a third
term as a presidential candidate for the progressive “Bull Moose” party, he said
this: “The people of the United States have but one instrument which they can
efficiently use against the colossal combinations of business—and that instrument is
the government of the United States. . . . Remember that it is absolutely
impossible to limit the power of these great corporations whose enormous power
constitutes so serious a problem in modern industrial life except by extending
the power of the government. All that these great corporations ask is that the
power of the government shall be limited. . . . There once was a time in
history when the limitation of governmental power meant increasing liberty for
the people. In the present day the limitation of governmental power, of
governmental action, means the enslavement of the people by the great
corporations who can only be held in check through the extension of
governmental power.”
Corporate interests have purchased
influence in government by basically purchasing politicians. And this is a
problem for both parties. But it is a far greater problem on the right. The
Democrats are still determined to increase the well-being of the lower and middle
classes. The Republicans, on the other hand, may talk a good populist game, but
when you look at what they support in terms of legislation, they almost
exclusively enact laws to help the wealthy and the corporate behemoths. Tax
cuts and corporate welfare and allowing corporations to self-regulate are high
on the GOP’s agenda. And as Roosevelt made clear, when you try to shrink
government, what you are really doing is shrinking the ability of government to
rein in corporate abuses. Consider all the EPA pollution regulations the Trump
administration rescinded. Whom does that help? Not me, and not you.
So, if you believe in democracy,
that the power should reside in the people, then you must also agree that
government is the only tool we as citizens have to serve our needs, some of
which are desperate. But if you believe the rhetoric that began with Ronald Reagan
and has only intensified over the years, claiming that government is the problem,
then the Republican Party is where you belong. I would hope that Latter-day
Saints would be for democracy, and not for a government of the corporation, by
the corporation, and for the corporation.
