Government – even parts you like – is problem

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for February 19, 2025)

The most dangerous thing about the Trump presidency is its risk of causing some people to regain faith in government. This would be a mistake.

Of course, it's making the opposition lose faith in government. They wanted to be the ones imposing their will for the next four years, and this caught them off guard. It derailed their "progress", progress which others experience as a descent into the Dark Ages.

What I see as progress-- dismantling some of the federal government-- others call corruption. The case could be made that corruption is being rooted out and destroyed. This is also mistaken.

It's not corruption; it's government working exactly as designed. The problem is in the design, not in the implementation and not in the details.

Most people only complain about "corruption" when government isn't doing what they want. Once you understand this is how government works you can stop calling the other side "corrupt" and accept that it all needs to be brought to its knees.

Look at the politicians, government employees, and political addicts who are screeching the loudest about the fraud being exposed. Many of them have dedicated decades to governing you in the most authoritarian ways imaginable, and it has made them rather comfortable. Shutting them down is the right thing to do.

The politicians and programs you dislike aren't the whole story. The parts you like are just as bad.

The military and the Pentagon, border control, and all federal law enforcement must also be slashed along with all foreign aid, DEI, and welfare programs. Otherwise, nothing will matter. These things are a millstone around America's neck, dragging it into the murky depths to oblivion.

If DOGE could delete everything government does which isn't explicitly mandated by the Constitution-- which is nearly everything-- America might be salvageable. If Trump has no courage to do this, he's only kicking the can down the road. America will be doomed, all because some percentage of people believe saving the government from accountability is essential.

I can't afford to keep supporting government; neither can you. It needs to be slashed to the bone, and the bones turned into fertilizer for liberty. It's the only way America will survive in the long run. Political government has always been an existential threat posing as a savior. Now is the time to expose it for what it is: a major part of the problem, not a solution.

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Overlying the reality underneath

There's reality and it is unbothered by the opinions and values of mere humans. Think of it as a transparency on an obsolete overhead projector. Over this reality, each human places a transparency they've drawn that expresses their opinions and values and changes how they see and navigate the reality beneath.

We don't all use the same transparency.

For example, in one corner of the reality diagram, there's the observation "Humans are prone to seek to rule or be ruled". No wishful thinking will change this, but the transparency you place over it affects how you handle it.

Most people-- being statists-- would place a transparency over this that expresses their opinions as to who should rule or how they should rule. Much fighting goes on over different ideas of who should rule and how they should rule. This explains most of the statist infighting.

My transparency would observe that "There is no such thing as a right to archate; everyone has a right to defend themselves from archation". 

No one has the right to rule another, and everyone has the right to refuse to comply-- and resist-- if the rules/rulers are intolerable and violate their natural human rights. Besides overlaying the part that says "Humans are prone to seek to rule or be ruled", that corner of my transparency would also cover "Humans tend to take property from others", "Some humans murder", and so forth. It's really all the same thing, just framed differently. Liberty covers it all.

Statist transparencies automatically lead to arguments and to wars. They lead to theft, kidnapping, murder, and governing. They are deceptive and harmful to humanity. You can acknowledge they exist, but give them no further attention.

This Liberty Transparency is more congruent with the underlying reality and with human nature than the various versions of statist transparencies; there's less conflict and none of the heavy-handed trying to force things to fit.

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