House of Eratosthenes

I’ve noticed the phrase “antipathy for government” being used a few times, specifically in reference to a particular Republican sideshow candidate. And I think we should take a moment to discuss what exactly libertarian-ey folks–and the politicians trying to court them–think about government and its proper role.

I don’t hate government. If I did, I’d be an anarchist, not a libertarian. I’m about ninety percent sure we need some amount of government, and about ninety percent sure we need taxes to support that government.

The thing is, a government is like a rifle: there are certain tasks for which no other tool will do. There are certain tasks you can do with other tools, but the rifle does them better if used with care, so using it is wise. But there’s a world of tasks out there that it’s terrible for, and trying to use it for those purposes will end up breaking the thing you want to fix and catching your neighbors in the stray fire. So you keep careful track of where you point the thing, and keep your finger off the damn trigger.

So I don’t hate government any more than I hate rifles, but I respect the damage both can do, and insist on keeping strict muzzle and trigger discipline. When you’ve built a government with a hundred-thousand employee strong bureau dedicated to regulating every aspect of agriculture and food, with an attitude of such pervasive, granular control that it thinks nothing of creating a “Christmas Tree Checkoff Task Force” to “strengthen the position of fresh cut Christmas trees in the marketplace and maintain and expand markets for Christmas trees within the United States”, you’re waving your damn rifle around with your booger-hook on the bang-switch, and other people on the firing line are right to be concerned.

I would add: The way we use government is actually much worse than this. For some reason, after we go through our election cycles and everyone’s been forced to sacrifice something in the fine art of compromise, and presumably the extremists on both sides have had to sacrifice the most so that we can find a sensible moderate approach behind which we can unify and proceed forward — over the long term, the way we end up growing the government is pretty close to what the most extremist, statist-minded left-wingers want. And when we discharge a projectile from this rifle in an effort to solve a particular problem, seems to me our subsequent actions are not very much affected by whether or not that discharge was a hit or a miss. Apart from the obvious, that is: If it’s a miss, we’re going to keep firing.

There’s unfortunately even more to add on. Government does not fire at a target, miss, and try again. Every time the weapon is discharged, what our government is doing is “legislating” that a round will be fired at such-and-such a direction every year from now until the end of time. In other words, if another bullet is fired in some different direction, with the intent of hitting exactly the same target, and that one is a hit, our government doesn’t have the inclination or the incentive or the track record of going back and saying “Okay, the target is over there…so that legislation obliging us to fire in this direction, to hit that target, is wrong. No need to argue this point, it’s an established fact. We need to repeal that legislation and stop firing over here.” Can’t do that. Because the bad legislation is “law,” you see. It’s also a jobs program.

Pointing these things out, is not “hate.”

[…] Grapes Like a Rifle Prelutsky on the Iran Hikers Cobra vs. Mongoose “Protested a Corporation and Turned it Into a […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/13/2011 @ 08:51
Oooo…what a lovely original parable (metaphor? simile?)about Libertarian-by any other name- minded folks.
Why, it’s almost as if the same thing, said about a hammer, might have been around for centuries. Although, I’m guessing that kind of meme no longer appears on current Social Studies, Humanities, Philosophy, Law, Social Justice, (fill in the blank)”studies”, or English Poetry, itemized degree invoices.
- CaptDMO | 11/13/2011 @ 08:52
As a gun enthusiast – especially rifles – (and weekly attendee at the local outdoor shooting range) I am definitely on-board with this metaphor.

Taking the metaphor a step further, I’d observe that the rifle never seems to run out of ammunition after all those missed shots…because the rest of us are compelled to keep buying more cartridges for it. And even though the one operating the weapon seems to be about the worst marksman this side of the Mississippi, he keeps standing there pulling the trigger again and again, and demanding more ammo be handed to him. Some of us look at the empty shell casings littering the ground, the holes all over the place EXCEPT the target, and wonder how much longer we ought to wait, before reaching over there and wrestling the damn thing away from him.

I suspect that point will come around the end of next year, when we have an opportunity to change shooters. Maybe we can find one who will at least suck less.
- cylarz | 11/13/2011 @ 20:23

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Like a RifleSunday, November 13th, 2011

Like a Rifle
Sunday, November 13th, 2011