The Size and
Scope of Government
(An Open Letter to Washington)
So Congress today passed the food bill and balked on maintaining
existing tax rates. In the past two years, Congress has passed the
health care bill, the financial "reform" bill, the food bill,
countless unemployment extensions, and spent unfathomable sums of money. All
this has given Congress and more particularly the White House, which
Congress delegated all this authority to, unprecedented reach into my
affairs. I cannot even get out of bed in the morning and take a shower
without running into federal regulations.
Leon Trotsky, that old Soviet revolutionary, said in a text he
published in 1937, "The old principle, ‘who does not work
shall not eat,’ has been replaced by a new one, ‘who does
not obey shall not eat.’" I ask you to consider
which condition America now more closely resembles, the former or the
latter?
How many more government agencies do we need before it is enough? How
many more laws must Congress enact? How many more regulations must I
endure? What taxes must I be required to pay? How much of my labor
must the State claim before I am allowed to labor for my own benefit?
Congressmen and Senators, when you look at the federal
government's responsibilities as outlined in the constitution,
there really is just one job that the government has: protect my
freedom. I have consented to none of these new laws and yet I am now
subject to them by legal requirement. Every action by Congress has
only added to my burden and reduced my liberties. Congress has sent
thousands of pages of laws this year alone to the White House
to enact and to courts to enforce and all these, if not followed most
stringently, may easily result in my being placed in prison. Rather
than protect my liberties, Congress has taken them away from me. I
tell you that when these measures are fully implemented, America will
no longer be a free land. There is a very strong argument to be made
that we are not free at this time, rather, we are unwilling servants of
government. For all this, members of Congress receive in payment and
benefits many times what the average citizen earns and far, far more
than our soldiers in uniform who are shedding their blood by the
direction of the White House and the authority of Congress.
Without economic liberty, there cannot be civil liberty. Without civil
liberty, there cannot be economic liberty. They are inexorably
linked. When either is restricted unnecessarily, prosperity becomes a
dream instead of a reality. More than one man has put this principle
in writing. Even men as far back as Adam Smith and Burke understood
this. Many have since come to the same conclusion. Congress, though,
does not seem to recognize this.
There is only one thing I want from Congress: I want to be free!
I believe that we stand at a precipice. We have an opportunity to move
in either direction: towards total State control and the dissolution
of individual state sovereignty or restoration of the principles on
which this nation was founded and the documents those principles
produced. There is no middle ground. So I ask you, which direction
will you face your tent?
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