Why Government?

If we ask ourselves, what is the purpose of Government? the ready answer is - to serve the people. But that isn't it. A government that serves the people would need to provide jobs for people, ensure they have adequate housing and wages and healthcare and education and toilet paper. But that isn't the function of government.

The Founders wrestled with these ideas and came up with a purpose for establishing a government. They wrote it into the Preamble of the Constitution. The purpose is - union justice tranquility defense welfare liberty. That is, a unified country, a just legal system, peace & harmony, safety & security, the well-being of citizens, and continuous personal freedom.

Nowhere did the Founders mention providing jobs, housing, wages, healthcare, or education. We can assume these things from "promote the general welfare" but we could assume that means anything we want it to. It could just as easily mean "see that river - catch fish, cook 'em & eat 'em, and you won't be hungry no more." So we can't just assume that the Founders meant for government to take care of people like a foster parent. Likely they didn't intend any of that.

Likely, they meant a unified country where people would take care of their own needs; while government would provide legal justice, law & order, and defense from foreign attack. As die-hard Republicans say "build roads, secure the borders, and leave us alone."

So which is it? A government that takes care of our needs; or just provides basic minimums so people can take care of themselves? Well, before ratifying the Constitution, the Founders had to come up with a Bill of Rights to clarify what government could & couldn't do. But mostly it aims limit to government overreach. Which tells us that government intervention should be minimal rather than inclusive.

So what changed? Obviously, in an elected government, vote seekers promise all sorts of new benefits if people vote for them. This is an obvious flaw of elected governance, but so it is. Hardly anyone is smart enough to turn down free stuff in the belief that it'll just make you lazy or dependent on gift-givers. But the more free stuff we get, the lazier and more dependent we become. And if we do that for any length of time, we convince ourselves that free stuff is actually a right that government owes us.

Hence any free stuff we got, quickly becomes "hey, you owed us that because it was our right to have it" followed by "now we want more, because that's also our right." So anything we don't have is considered something the stingy government is depriving us of because all they'd have to do is tax the rich and give stuff to everybody else - in short, the platform of Progressive politics.

So what would a happy medium be? Well, theoretically, there'd be no medium - we'd simply adhere to the minimalist governance of the Founders. But theory isn't practice. When the government asks its men and heads of families to fight & die in wars, or send their sons to do that - then people are going to want compensation for that. At the very least, they'll want free college education and subsidized loans to buy houses. Which is clearly a small price for government to pay for the soldiers who fought in global wars.

But the next round of demands is even steeper. Enlightened thinkers will insist that "we aren't going to risk our lives to fight in your wars, but we still want more and more benefits." And enlightened vote seekers will run on those issues, disguising them as "the people's rights." Otherwise known as the welfare state. Which benefits everyone in the short term, and no one in the long run.

Todd Among the Nightingales

Todd meanders down the street, scrawny, pot-bellied; I see he’s lost most of his hair now. Comes over to the guys outside the halfway house with a big smile on his face. They’re sitting there smoking cigarettes watching the grass grow, whatever. Friends of his, I guess.

I’m making a delivery, dropping off a package. “He was one of the Chicago Seven” I tell ‘em. Todd smiles, starts recounting the names “Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin...” Yeah, and Todd Obermeyer.  

We used to talk about it, back when I was his caseworker, as if that’s all there was. Paging through the high school yearbook, pictures in black and white. Pretty girls in pep club outfits, Pierpoint Rustlerettes 1967.

Todd looks at the pictures objectively, distantly; tells me how shy and dysfunctional he was in school; even though his folks had money. A scrawny little mouse with droopy eyes and big ears, short hair cut. Like none of that ever mattered anyway. “I’m forty-eight years old y’know.”

Then in college, somehow in a fraternity, in with the bright young going somewhere crowd. The cusp of future leaders. Chicago ’68, when he had the breakdown. They brought him back from Canada, put him in the hospital for twenty years. Ten more after that on the outside, still that’s all there ever was.

Lives alone in a spotlessly clean apartment, government funded. Everything neat and orderly, very nice. “I got no food” he says, objectively, not that it matters. Just something to talk about, making conversation. We have to meet, we have to talk. What else is there to say.

First of the month his check comes in. The vultures swoop down and take it away. Tougher needier mental patients who prey on the weaker ones. Borrow things, like your money. “They talk me into it” he says “what can I do? He says he’ll pay me back, and he never does. Next time I’m gonna just tell him no.”

Aint gonna happen. I’d like to see Todd get really angry about it, just to see how far he’d go before he’d back down. Like a couple of Pomeranians fighting each other. Or maybe that’s how we all are when you think about it.

Take him to the food pantry where people donate food so that others who don’t have any can come get some. Todd’s very picky. “Do you have...” this, that, the other, like we’re at the supermarket, anything you want. I’m embarrassed. This is free food Todd, just take what the lady gives you, okay? Asks if he can come back every month, his problems would be solved.

I like Todd, he’s so different from what you’d think a schizophrenic would be. So quiet calm peaceful. That slight smile, like things are amusing to him, or beyond his control. Always so friendly, gentle, dignified in his own way. A pleasure to visit with him, to escape from the constant tension and stress of the job. Just to sit here in this spotlessly clean apartment, reminisce about old days.

When I get to know him better, he confides in me a bit. The color coded signals God uses to tell him things. He saw a man on tv wearing a blue suit. Blue means royalty, that was a good man. Something yellow in a magazine would be a warning. Don’t go out today. Orange is even more dangerous.

That was years ago. I’m surprised he’s made it this far. But I like Todd, I’m happy to see him. Later run across him meandering down the street, big fleshy bulge on the side of his neck. “Todd, how you doing?” “Well...I got cancer. Of the lymph nodes, I guess. They’re giving me chemo... I’m fifty-eight years old, y’know.”

 After the Nam 

Everybody changes and gets somewhere. Everybody grows, but not me. I'm inverting, like a child now. Movies make me cry, the Olympics make me cry. 

I'm over at Five Points with Cap'n and Deke, and then Cap'n goes home. We'll catch a ride later, we say, after some more pool, a few more beers, but we don't.

And what the hell, nice night, all starry and wide open sky, a little cold in the fall, so what. We got Jack in the Bottle, and that's warm. We choose: the dirt road sees a car not very often this late; the tracks cut angle across to Sutterville. We take the tracks, what the hell, seven miles, Jack in the Bottle, what the hell. We talk, old friends, old dreams, all of them broken.

Deke wanted to join the Army, shoots straight and true at rabbits, at pool, at targets at the fair, ever since he's a kid. Deke, a big heavy guy. They won't take him now - he's overweight and there's no war, no need. He tells me his sad life story like it's over, like can't I feel his pain, his quaking voice, this great big man with hands like turtle shells.

I take a drink and speak of that little Russian girl who won gold in gymnastics; such a cute little kid, so proud and tough and alone. It makes me want to cry, so happy it worked out right for her, so fretful it would not. Deke drinks and yells at the black of the sky, and agrees. He saw that too. He felt that too. She won, and almost our victory with her. And that's all we ever won.