WHY DO WE EXPECT BIG GOVERNMENT TO WORK?

1 John 2:15-17 New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁵ Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

(Here and here are explanations of the passage above.)

When we become obsessed with the world, we lack empathy. We may be quite capable of manipulating others, but those others are merely objects, a means to an end. How does this self-centered perspective affect a selfish person’s attitude towards government? Consider a quote from President John F. Kennedy.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. (from here)

How would a self-centered person have reacted to Kennedy’s call for service? Would they take it to heart, or would they just expect the sappy politician giving them that advice to do them a big favor?

Examples Of The Big Favors Provided Big Government

When politicians make promises they have no intention of keeping, they lie.

Politicians use to the power we give them to buy our votes. The worst of them promise to buy our votes with other people’s money. They make promises they know they cannot keep. Because the vast bulk of our nation’s wealth passes through the hands of ordinary Americans, to pay for Big Government, politicians must tax any ordinary Americans with a job. Then to finance their campaigns and spread their lies through the corporate mass media, politicians must cater to special interests. Thus, when politicians promise to tax the rich they lie.

Free Education: Parents, not government, have the responsibility for ensuring their children receive a good education. What happens when government takes over the education of children? Don’t politicians sell special interests access to our children? Thus:

• Government buys the products of various corporate interests for the “benefit” of school children.
• Labor unions leaders acquire control over numerous secure jobs with great benefits.
• Without the approval of parents, groups with some really strange ideologies use the public school system to indoctrinate school children.

Social Security: The Social Security tax is a highly regressive tax aimed squarely at every American with a job. The rich don’t pay payroll taxes. Everybody with a job does, but because those taxes go into a secure “trust fund” Social Security is suppose to be a great deal. In fact, Congress just spends the money. If a private company tried such a scam, the CEO would be accused of fraud and put in jail.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare: Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare represent a government takeover of our healthcare system. What advocates hope to do is what they have already done to our education system. Just as our education system has eliminated school choice for ordinary Americans, the government takeover our healthcare system will eliminate our ability to make our own healthcare choices.

Tax Credits, Deductions, and Various Other “Incentives”: Ever wonder how our tax system got so horribly complex? Various special interests have purchased innumerable special tax favors from the people we elect.

Minimum Wage: To anyone but the ignorant, the minimum wage is a fraud. What happens when government demands that an employer pay a worker more than that worker’s labor is worth? Doesn’t that question answer itself?

Making It Easy To Vote:  We give our elected officials enormous powers. Consider just the money our elected officials control. The combined spending of local, state and the federal government is over six trillion a year, and various corporations and individuals compete for access to that money. Therefore, these corporations and individuals lobby our elected officials, offering any temptation they can get away with.

Because the powers that elected officials possess (control over huge budgets, for example) represent a valuable commodity for dishonest people, we have no choice except to assume the possibility of electoral fraud. Traditionally, we have protected the vote by insisting that everyone who can vote vote in person on election day. That includes providing identification.

If you search the Internet, you will find huge numbers of articles claiming that voter fraud is a myth. Yet we all know Democrats want illegal aliens to vote, think the mere requirement for a photo ID is voter suppression, and fight any effort to clean up voter registration lists. If that is not suspicious, what is it? Consider these reports.

• How Widespread is Voter Fraud? | 2012 Facts & Figures from True the Vote
• Non-citizens caught voting in 2012 presidential election in key swing state from FoxNews
• Is Voter Fraud a Real Problem? at US News offers a debate
• Voter Fraud: We’ve Got Proof It’s Easy at National Review
• Study confirms every bad thing you suspected about voter ID laws at Salon

The basic argument? Conservatives say it only makes sense to verify that those who vote have the right to vote. Socialists whine that voter verification reduces the turnout of their supporters. They complain about the result and call that voter suppression, but they cannot show that requiring a photo ID, for example, wrongly suppresses the vote.

On the other hand, Socialists say that voter fraud is rare, but Conservatives point to the obvious. When little effort is made to detect and prevent it, voter fraud is easy.

Succumbing To Decadence

Because even a small society involves a complex interaction between many different souls, we cannot easily predict our future. We can only observe current trends and guess what might happen.

Currents trends do not look good. The dictionary definition of “decadence” is value-free. Without mentioning what is being lost, it points to a decay in moral qualities. Thus, to say America is becoming decadent, we must first clearly state what is being lost.

What is being lost in our society? Because we have given over the responsibility to educate our children to politicians, each succeeding generation of Americans has less knowledge of the wisdom contained in the Bible. Why is that important? Consider how the Bible defines wisdom. When King Solomon asked God for wisdom, what did he ask for?

Solomon wanted to know how to discern good from evil. When men are fools, they call evil good and good evil. Then they become decadent (Isaiah 5:8-30), and they are doomed.

Like Solomon, we too need God’s wisdom. As it is, we do not know enough to vote for leaders who understand and appreciate the Bible’s wisdom. We have innumerable Bibles, but we remain spiritually immature. We have a baby’s wisdom. Because we have not studied the Bible, we cannot chew solid food. We still need milk.

Ending Captivity By Big Government

When Jesus began his ministry, he started by quoting Isaiah.

Luke 4:17-19 New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁷ And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: