un-American

So, what’s the latest war news? Same same I suppose with the odd exception that the military is starting to publish nigh-daily enemy bodycounts. I firmly believe in war, I wish we’d do it more often and I think that once we get our head out of our collective backside we’ll sort Iraq out riki-tiki. I do, however, find the bodycount reports a little eerie.

But on to what I wanted to say today. A friend told me he “loves America but hates Americans.” OK, fair enough if that’s what you mean. I myself don’t like 100% of the human race (those I do like are too few in number to make even a statisically significant percentage). What I think he meant though is something akin to the old bumper sticker standby, “I love my country, it’s the government I’m afraid of.”

Very clever. My question is, where do you draw the line between the country, the people and the government? The way I see it, the people are the government. Matter of fact it says so in the supreme law of the land. Hell, it’s the first three words! We the People . . . It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

The problem is not neccessarily the government – at least not the government we see in action on C-SPAN or sputtering for soundbites on the nightly news. That government is accountable to the people, if you don’t like ’em, throw the bums out! What we all dislike is the shadow government. The faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats stashed away in innumerable concrete caverns and huddled Gollum-like over their mohair subsidies. That’s what we don’t like. You can’t ever get rid of a government program. The great national helium reserve, from the days when airships were going to be essential to national security, is still alive and kicking. The aforementioned mohair subsidy, from the days when the Army wore woolen uniforms and sheep were going to be essential to national security, is still pumping dough into an unneeded industry.

So, what do we do? What would you do if you had absolute oragnizational power for one day? Me, I’d slash the federal workforce by probably over 50%. I’d outlaw public employee unions – what gives people working for the taxpayer the right to unionize in order to squeeze more money from the taxpayer? I’d eliminate the Departments of Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development. I’d combine Commerce and Labor like it was when it was created. I’d fold Agriculture into Interior. I’d rename Homeland Security the Department of Defense and rename the DoD the Department of War. That’d pretty much clarify responsibilities wouldn’t it? I think we could safely roll the VA back into the Dept. of War. The DoT should be eliminated or rolled into the DoI. I think that pretty much covers everything.

Think of the money we’d save. Think of the possibilities of making the federal government do only what it is mandated to do: provide for the common defense and regulate interstate trade.

Man, that’d be nifty. And then maybe people’d stop being annoyed with the monster they themselves created.