Why is our government in the wrong business?

This is the third part of a four-part essay. Here are the four parts.

• What is the proper business of our government?
• What is the business is our government?
• Why is our government in the wrong business?
• What can we do the put our government in the right business?

In this part of the essay we will consider the question: Why is our government in the wrong business? This is where the subject becomes extremely difficult to untangle. Here we try to distinguish the right thing to do from the wrong thing to do, and we have few real facts to guide us. Instead, we have principles – and a sense of humor.
Chuck Asay’s work is available at http://www.comics.com/editoons/.

There does not seem to be one universal truth as to how we should run government. Some even dispute that democracy is the best form of government. Sir Winston Churchill probably had the best answer for those critics.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Nonetheless, even if we concede that democracy is the best form of government, that leaves a lot of latitude.

Supposedly, there are absolute truths. We say it is wrong to kill, wrong to steal, wrong to lie…. That it is right to be generous and kind, to forgive our enemies, to raise our children as best we can…. In practice, however, people too often depart from these truths. Politics, in particular, seems to be a realm where people frequently depart from the truth. Yet, I doubt that any of us actually sees things as they actually are. We only see what we see from our point of view.

Since I have engineering background, I tend to see things as systems, networks of interrelated processes. To achieve the desired output, an engineer tries to understand how a system works, what inputs are required, what variables control the various processes, and how the processes interrelate.

As an incentive to study, the first thing an engineer learns is that a system will not perform as desired just because such performance is desired. Quite often, voters do not seem to grasp this fact. Because their elected leaders will not do what they elected them to do, they get mad at them, but such behavior is futile. As a practical matter each of our elected leaders is just another cog in the system. None of our elected leaders has the power by himself or herself to effect any great change in the system.

We often speak of the three branches of government. We have an executive, a legislative, and a judicial branch. In a democracy we also have the People. If the President, the Congress, and Supreme Court are our three branches of government, then the People are its trunk and roots; the People have ultimate power. If there is something wrong in the manner in which the government is performing the fault lies not with the leadership; the fault lies with the people. George Bernard Shaw put it this way.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

If over a long period of time, our government performs poorly, it is almost certain we as a People have failed to execute our responsibility to make it work. If we have put different leaders in charge at various times and the government still does not work, who else is there to blame except the People who chose the leaders? Eventually we must ask ourselves, what is wrong with Us.

In a democracy, the primary function the People is to vote. This function requires that the People educate themselves about how their government works, the problems of the day, and the qualifications of the candidates for public office. If the People fail to vote properly, then the likely problem is that they have allowed themselves to become misinformed.

What would cause the People to be misinformed? Here is a list of what I think contributes to a misinformed American People.

• Public School System -The public school system is the primary institution that educates the People. This system is government owned and operated. Because politicians control the funding, the public school system is run for the benefit of the politicians, not the People.
• Commercial News Media – The commercial news media provides the People information on current events. This information is “free” to the People. Advertisers pay the cost. As a result, the focus of such media is gaining audience attention, not education.
• Public Television and Radio – PBS and NPR receive extensive government funding. Thus, much like the public school system, PBS and NPR operates for the benefit of politicians.
• Politicians – The typical politician seeks elected office by making promises to various organized political constituencies. The politician serves as an advocate. He or she gathers contributions and spends whatever it takes to get the People’s vote.