A QUOTE OUT OF CONTEXT

As Teri’s Tyrades notes here, President Barack Obama recently quoted Abraham Lincoln in a speech.  In response, I decided to borrow the following.

“The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves.” –Barack Obama, quoting Abraham Lincoln

“[N]ot a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make [a pencil].” –Leonard Read, “I, Pencil”

Therefore, making pencils — and, by implication, everything else — is a legitimate object of government.

What’s wrong with this argument?  ( from here)

Here, by the way, is Obama’s quotation of Lincoln in context.

The Nature and Objects of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery. Fragmentary Notes. About July i, 1854.

Government is a combination of the people of a country to effect certain objects by joint effort. The best framed and best administered governments are necessarily expensive; while by errors in frame and maladministration most of them are more onerous than they need be, and some of them very oppressive. Why, then, should we have government? Why not each individual take to himself the whole fruit of his labor, without having any of it taxed away, in services, corn, or money? Why not take just so much land as he can cultivate with his own hands, without buying it of any one ?

The legitimate object of government is “to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.” There are many such things – some of them exist independently of the injustice in the world. Making and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like ; providing for the helpless young and afflicted ; common schools ; and disposing of deceased men’s property, are instances.

But a far larger class of objects springs from the injustice of men. If one people will make war upon another, it is a necessity with, that other to unite and cooperate for defense. Hence the military department. If some men will kill, or beat, or constrain others, or despoil them of property, by force, fraud, or non-compliance with contracts, it is a common object with peaceful and just men to prevent it. Hence the criminal and civil departments.

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves, in their separate and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere. The desirable things, which the individuals of a people cannot do, or cannot well do, for themselves, fall into two classes: those which have relation to wrongs, and those which have not. Each of these branches off into an infinite variety of subdivisions.

The first – that in relation to wrongs – embraces all crimes, misdemeanors, and non-performance of contracts. The other embraces all which, in its nature, and without wrong, requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.

From this it appears that if all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government. (from here) (Note that the speech continues and refers to the subject of slavery.)

From Lincoln’s perpective, we have manage to invert things.  We have made what Lincoln called the “other” class the far larger class.