Why government isn’t the answer

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, “Well someone should make a law about that,” or “well there should be a program to deal with that.” And yet, when we look at local, state, and even the federal budgets, we are drowned in a sea of red ink, mismanagement, graft, nepotism, and corruption that benefits a small minority over the needs of the many. We also see how long it takes for government agencies to respond to a crisis, and how fumbling the response tends to be, regardless of who is in charge.

We as a society are in a position where we must make a choice. We continue to give more responsibilities and power to the government in exchange for more security and less liberty, or we begin to reclaim our responsibilities, rights, and liberties with no guarantee of aid should the need arise. And while it sounds like a no-win proposition, reclaiming our responsibilities is in the long run the best, and ultimately, only viable solution to continued liberty.

I should explain what I mean by reclaiming our responsibilities. We, in the US, are born into a constitutional republic, that enshrines The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, which states that we are born endowed with certain inalienable rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In order to protect those inalienable rights, we are protected by a series of negative liberties enumerated to the federal government as protection from overreach and tyranny. Our freedoms of speech, press, assembly, petition, and religion our held first and foremost, protected with our right to keep and bear arms, along with the other articles included in the bill of Rights. But while many enjoy the privileges that those rights entail, they often forget that there is an equally important opposite side to having them, and that is being responsible with them.

Having the freedom to say whatever thing pops into your head without fear of recourse from the government is a really powerful thing. Being allowed to criticize your fellow human beings, organizations, companies, movements, politicians, religious leaders, etc. without living under threat of arrest is a right not afforded to many outside this country. And yet we live in a society where we can plaster every negative thought that pops into our heads on Twitter or Facebook and throw it out into the ether to dwell in perpetuity with little effort at responsible discourse. We practice our faith without fear of being killed as a member of that faith by fringe zealots. We publish opinion pieces with little factual evidence and treat them as gospel. We protest systemic injustices with little thought to the impact to the environment once we leave or only passing thoughts to how it negatively impacts others.

Hopefully I’ve explained it well enough. We as a society, if we are interested in keeping our republic, must return to responsibility at the individual level. We must take ownership and agency over our own lives first and foremost, using that agency to improve our own situation within the confines of the law. We must speak to others responsibly, using our language to deescalate rather than inflame. We must return to practicing our faith personally and being living examples of our faith. We must write responsibly, making sure that we get the facts straight before we tell the story.

That is the pre-requisite to a successful republic. That is the foundation on which this country operates. But it seems that this country’s foundation is cracking, and the house on which it is built will crumble and fall if left unattended. So instead of saying that we need a new law or a new program or a new regulation, we should be asking ourselves to step up, live responsibly, be better people without the threat of penalty from some unnamed and faceless bureaucrat. Because otherwise all of this will be gone.