Government is Childish

Government is childish.

Adults don't usually concern themselves with the games 10 year olds play, no matter how seriously the kids involved take the game. Until the kids' game injures someone. Adults often think the kids' game is cute and smile on in amusement at how serious the kids get. That's how I feel about The State. Play your childish game and leave the grow-ups out of it.

Claire Wolfe recently had a good observation about those who play this childish game. Here's a snip:

I don’t claim to understand the impulse. But one thing I know: It’s the same impulse that drives hopeful souls to write letters to their congresscritters, pointing out that such-and-such bill or law violates the Constitution and actually imagining that might change the perpetrator’s mind. (Um, don’t ask me how I know that, okay?)

It’s the same fevered hope that leads people to believe — to truly Believe — that if they can just elect the “right” people to office that government will become clean, honest, fiscally prudent, and self-policing.

It’s the same thing that drives people to attend politicians’ townhall meetings and wait patiently for the opportunity to step up to the mic and explain why Politician X really shouldn’t have voted that way and wouldn’t have voted that way, had he or she possessed all the relevant facts.

It’s the same delusion that, in its extreme stages, prompts people to say things like, “The government is US!” Or “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain!”

See how childish that kind of thinking is? It's time to grow up and leave the childish games to the children, and stop letting those games hurt bystanders. Humor the children but don't take them seriously anymore.

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