Arthur C. Brooks and Paul Ryan assert in their Sept. 13 op-ed, "The Size of Government and the Choice This Fall,"
that a large majority of Americans (70% or so) want smaller government
and stronger free enterprise, "but the other 30% keep moving us closer
toward an unacceptably statist America."
Imagine if the economy
had picked up a little more steam this year and unemployment had drifted
down instead of up. The media would be touting the success of
Obamanomics and the Democrats probably wouldn't be in danger of losing
control of Congress. There still would be rumblings about unsustainable
debt and unaffordable entitlements, but a seismic philosophical shift to
lower taxes and smaller government likely would be postponed. The
result would be further nudges toward a European-style social democracy,
with more than 50% of Americans growing increasingly dependent on
government income subsidies of one sort or another.
The possibility of an
entitlements cartel in Washington hooking the American people on
government payola always is a basic threat to a democratic republic.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of that risk 175 years ago, warning that
citizens in democracies can be seduced into surrendering their liberties
by a beneficent version of despotism that: "Provides for their
security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their
pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry,
regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances. . .
. it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less
useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower
range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself." That sounds a
lot like today's Democratic Party platform.
Peter Douglas
Norfolk, Va.
Government has grown
incrementally partly because voters are confronted with a menu of
beneficent choices, absent costs. Moreover, voters often assume that
"government" (meaning someone else) is going to pay for everything
approved, so there is a biased proclivity for government to grow larger
over time.
Perhaps more important to
the burgeoning size of government is the bastardization of the
free-market system, reducing its efficient operation. Prices and quotas
are set politically, often with unintended results. Wages and incomes
are modified by government edict or through transfer payments. Economic
activity is also controlled directly through loans to favored
recipients, and indirectly through loans and insurance guaranteed by the
government. Voluminous laws and business regulations have become
unintelligible and entail burdensome compliance and reporting costs.
The evidence suggests
that the political class has little understanding or respect for the
role of the free market in production, consumption and the allocation of
resources. As a consequence we have a mixed economy achieved by
tinkering or modifying markets, and with a concomitant loss of
efficiency and individual liberty. Both political parties are guilty,
differing mainly by the clientele served.
Delores Thompson
Walnut Creek, Calif.
I had hoped that Paul
Ryan would be a new kind of Republican who could help the Republicans
move towards a new, strong position of small government and
get-out-of-the-way economics. However, his op-ed shows that if he became
the standard-bearer for the GOP in 2012, he would be another Republican
who is simply "Democrat-lite."
Despite claiming to be
against cradle-to-grave welfare, his position accepts the same ideals as
the Democrats: ". . . rectifying market failures to securing some
minimum standard of living." His goal now seems to be "finding the right
level" of government interference in the market. This is a difference
of degree, not of kind.
Until the Republicans
offer a clear alternative to the morality of welfarism that is now built
into the Democrats' DNA, the Republicans will just be a party that
bounces from temporary electoral success to temporary electoral failure
and back.
John Gillis
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 