{"id":2031,"date":"2022-05-20T13:22:44","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T13:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/20\/are-we-the-government\/"},"modified":"2022-05-20T13:22:44","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T13:22:44","slug":"are-we-the-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/20\/are-we-the-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We the Government?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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"We the people are the government." (Joe Biden) Barack Obama used to spout that same falsehood. "The government is us."<\/span><\/div>\n
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It is a nice question whether they were lying or bullshitting.  The liar cares enough about the truth to want to hide it from us. The bullshitter doesn't care about the truth and will say anything. I borrow the distinction from Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit,<\/em> a book undoubtedly more purchased than read.  It is a fine piece of analysis, but probably beyond the grasp of those who have 'twitterized' their attention spans.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The government is not<\/em> us. It is an entity distinct from most of us, and opposed to many if not most of us, run by a relatively small number of us. Among the latter are some decent people but also plenty of power-hungry individuals who may have started out with good intentions but who were soon suborned by the power, perquisites, and pelf of high office, people for whom a government position is a hustle like any hustle.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Government likes power and likes to expand its power, and can be counted on to come up with plenty of rationalizations for the maintenance and extension of its power. It must be kept in check by us, who are not part of the government, just as big corporations need to be kept in check by government regulators.  Not that proper regulation is likely now under 'woke' capitalism.  But this is a large and separate topic.<\/span><\/div>\n
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If you value liberty you must cultivate a healthy skepticism about government. To do so is not anti-government. Leftists love to slander us by saying that we are anti-government. It is a lie and they know it. They are not so stupid as not to know that to be for limited<\/em> government is to be for<\/em> government. But truth is not their concern; winning is. To their way of thinking the glorious end justifies the shabby means.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"We the people are the government." (Joe Biden) Barack Obama used to spout that same falsehood. "The government is us."   It is a nice question whether they were lying or bullshitting.  The liar cares enough about the truth to want to hide it from us. The bullshitter doesn't care about the truth and will … Continue reading “Are We the Government?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245,117,123,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-polemics","category-political-dissimulation","category-political-morality","category-social-and-political-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}