Government meddling not helping

Government meddling not helping

(My Clovis News Journal column for October 25, 2013.)

When judging whether you should do more of something, or even continue to do it at all, a necessary step is to look at the results your actions have produced so far.

After over a century of government schooling, usually erroneously called "public education", illiteracy is at crisis levels in America. Another century of letting government control education and today's texting generation may be literacy's "good old days" by comparison.

After a century or so of ever-escalating anti-gun "laws", the least dangerous places are still those areas which have avoided the most restrictive, or what the anti-gun activists would call "common sense", regulations. The most restrictive locations keep getting less safe.

Because of strife between the "races", government imposed "laws" which violated the right of association, particularly that policy which was called "Affirmative Action", and caused the strife between the races to begin heating up again. For decades now, about the only racial problems that have existed are those directly created by government intervention.

President Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty", and imposed policies that made poverty practically hereditary and almost impossible for those being "helped" to ever escape. Poverty is winning that war.

After several decades of drug prohibition, approximately the same percentage of people are addicted to the forbidden substances as were addicted before the prohibition began, and the laws are driving the drugs to grow ever more dangerous and cheaper.

Here in the midst of the post-9/11 security mania, Americans are less free at home and less safe when venturing out into the rest of the world. And there have never been more people around the world willing to kill or die to strike a blow at the US government, which they mistake for Americans.

After handing control of the money supply over to the Federal Reserve a hundred years ago the US dollar has lost 95% or more of it's value. "Inflation" isn't normal; it is the consequence of the Federal Reserve's accelerating counterfeiting operation which floods the economy with more and more dollars every year- each of which makes the dollar in your hand worth just a little bit less.

How is all that "help" working for you?

Of course, when proposing to interfere, you also need to examine whether your plans will violate the rightful liberty of any person, or violate their property rights in any way, no matter how seemingly minor. If it will you shouldn't ever do it.

It leaves me wondering, how can anyone imagine that socializing medical care will have an effect opposite to that of state intervention in every other area?
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