enough already with the small government stuff

The small government stuff is stupid. I’m sorry for being impolite and rash, but I’m right. It’s stupid, and it’s part of a larger trend of ideological masturbation. I listened to a discussion on the role of FEMA on NPR today. Someone from the Cato Institute was part of the discussion. While the other panelists talked about actual facts and figures, the dude from the Cato institute spouted ideology. He even said at one point that he didn’t know about whether FEMA was better run now, but that how well it was working was beside the point. His message was simple … ‘I want government to be smaller and it really doesn’t matter what facts or reason dictate.’ He likes his ideas, and he’s going to make the world fit them. It doesn’t matter that FEMA plays an important coordination role, a role it initially undertook at the request of states. It doesn’t matter that storms generally don’t adhere to state boundaries. It doesn’t matter that the Constitution was written to expand Federal Power. It doesn’t matter that it is pretty clear that leaving things to the market or the states, without any federal oversight, doesn’t work. I don’t get it … but I don’t understand why government would fragment as corporations head in the opposite direction. Why should Wal-Mart and Target be the only national entities coordinating disaster relief? Why do workers now need less government protection? Why does business no need less regulation? Has it been that long since the last financial crisis that was caused by a lack of oversight? Has the environment become less important? As China invests almost 10% of its GDP into infrastructure, why is now the time for us to move in the opposite direction. It just makes no sense, which is why the tirade against big government is always so full of angry rhetoric and pristine ideology, and short on the mean and dirty facts. If you want to curt FEMA and the Department of Education … you are stupid. You need to start trying to solve problems, or at least poke your head up out of the cubicle in your research institute and into the real world. If not, the rest of us need to come into your cubicle and tell you to stop or else. Even better, maybe if we ignore you then you’ll go away and take your ideological fervor with you.