{"id":8784,"date":"2013-05-16T12:47:32","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T12:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/05\/16\/the-government-is-us\/"},"modified":"2013-05-16T12:47:32","modified_gmt":"2013-05-16T12:47:32","slug":"the-government-is-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/05\/16\/the-government-is-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The Government Is Us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liberals like to say that the government is us<\/em>.  President Obama recently<\/a> trotted out the line to quell the fears of gun owners:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

You hear some of these quotes: \u2018I need a gun to protect myself from the government.\u2019 \u2018We can\u2019t do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away,\u2019 Obama said. \u201cWell, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It\u2019s a government of and by and for the people.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Liberals might want to think about the following.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the government is us, and the government lies to us about Benghazi or anything else, then we must be lying to ourselves.  Right?<\/span><\/p>\n

If the government is us, and the government uses the IRS to harass  certain groups of citizens whose political views the administration opposes, then we must be harassing ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

I could continue in this vein, but you get the drift.  "The government is us" is blather.  It is on a par with Paul Krugman's silly notion that we owe the national debt to ourselves. (See Left, Right, and Debt.)<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

It is true that some, but not all, of those who have power over us are elected.  But that truth cannot be expressed by the literally false, if not meaningless, 'The government is us.' Anyone who uses this sentence is mendacious or foolish.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe government is not<\/em> us. It is an entity distinct from most of us, and opposed to many 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<\/a> of high office, people for whom a government position is a hustle like any hustle. Government, like any entity, 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<\/em> part of the government, just as big corporations need to be kept in check by government regulators.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

If you value liberty you must cultivate a healthy skepticism about government.  To do so is not anti-government.  Certain scumbags of the Left 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 government is to be for government.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two extremes to avoid, the libertarian and the liberal. Libertarians often say that the government can do nothing right, and that the solution is to privatize everything including the <\/span>
National Parks. Both halves of that assertion are patent nonsense. It is equal but opposite nonsense to think that Big Government will solve all our problems. Ronald Reagan had it right: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have." Or something like that. <\/span><\/p>\n

From a logical point of view, the \u2018Government is us\u2019 nonsense appears to be a pars pro toto<\/em> fallacy: one identifies a proper part (the governing) with the whole of which it is a proper part (the governed). <\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Who Built the Internet? Obama's Straw Man Fallacy<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Conservatives, Liberals, and Happiness<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Dems: "Government is the Only Thing We All Belong To"<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The IRS Scandal: the Future of Big Government Is Now<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Ignatius: Big government "frighteningly impotent"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liberals like to say that the government is us.  President Obama recently trotted out the line to quell the fears of gun owners: You hear some of these quotes: \u2018I need a gun to protect myself from the government.\u2019 \u2018We can\u2019t do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away,\u2019 … Continue reading “The Government Is Us?”<\/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":[64,32,6,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-current-affairs","category-language-matters","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8784","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=8784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}