Hell and the petty bureaucrat

"Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?" -C. S. Lewis

This isn't the quote we were seeking. Yet it will have to do, and is a decent enough lead in to the subject we wish to address today. The quote we wanted, and we confess right off that this will be a horrible paraphrase of it, dealt with Lewis, speaking through his famous character Screwtape, on the power of bureaucracy. Lewis seems to fear not the Hitlers of the world, but the mousey little bureaucrats who actually run so much of it. He despises the small, well manicured, spectacled man in an office who will not allow another man, a fellow citizen, the right to chop down a tree on his own land to make boards to fix his own steps (or outbuilding or some such) without the proper permits and permissions.

Such folk can so easily be made to appear comic; indeed, Douglas Adams (if we may cross reference the views of a devout Christian with those of a rabid atheist) makes light of them rather well in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Unfortunately, such an interpretation isn't so useful as that of Mr. Lewis. The bureaucrat is far more dangerous than funny. And the government is brimming with them.

We have witnessed both attempts and triumphs by similar elected politicians (and all too often merely appointed civil servants) to force people to drink no more than 16 ounces of a soft drink at a time. We see leaders who don't want to find any trans fats in our food. We find officials who don't want us mowing our lawns or filling our cars with gas on ozone action days. And you don't even have to go to the newest suburbs to hear wails against urban sprawl. Yet what might these all have in common with Hitler?

Only the simple fact that they're all arguably tyrannical people committing arguably tyrannical actions.

Liberals cannot, or choose not, to see this. Overt and powerful evil, yes, they recognize quite readily. But who wouldn't? Hitler, Mao, Stalin; only a true fool could not see the threats they were. Yet our leftist friends do not see the petty tyrant. The truth is, they encourage him. Or her, lest the speakers of the v-word be insulted by a mere masculine reference made with no intention to offend.

To be sure, any one of these actions seen by itself doesn't seem so bad. Some of them indeed may not be bad. Any one by itself might even simply be a misplaced emphasis, may only be mere stupidity, or may even be honest good intention. It is all too easy to say of any individual person or instance, they mean well. Still, the question rarely asked is whether any of them ought to be the province or persons of government and the bureaucracy at all, and if so, which ones really.

What is also overlooked is that no matter what they mean, they may be a symptom of a greater disease. Every petty action by every petty official seen against the big picture demonstrates that small evils may lead to larger ones. Little Hitlers may one day become big Hitlers. It may well be, it likely as not is, that not a one of these people understand that their little sin against their fellow man can lead to far worse sins against him or the world.

Skin cancers by and large are the most curable of cancers. Yet if one ignores the blemish on their arm, thinking that it's nothing and could not possibly come to harm and thus pays it no mind, what will happen? Several years later doctors will be telling him that they can do nothing for him. But if he had done something about it when he first noticed it...

This is not to say that every bureaucrat or indeed every liberal thinker (in the modern American sense of the term anyway) is an evil person, or that every act of theirs must lead to tyranny. But it is meant to caution us that sometimes things do go in directions which we cannot immediately envision, that we are responsible not only for the direct effects of our actions but also for the sometimes unpredictable consequences of them, and that the road to Hell is indeed paved with the best of intentions.

None of that will matter when and if an American or Canadian or British Hitler rises to power. Yet the truly sad thing is, should that actually happen, no one will claim to have seen it coming. They will be all too correct.

It is the Economy, Stupid, but not why You Think

The dust is settling in the aftermath of the Michigan primary. It is not so much of a victory as Romney would like, either. Both he and Rick Santorum will get 15 delegates from the Great Lakes State. The race was that close.

This must be seen as a win for Santorum. Michigan is a state Romney won easily against John McCain in 2008 and was seen as home turf. What this means is that Super Tuesday has become very, very interesting. We'll be watching closely, to be sure.

We mentioned yesterday how the political hacks, going back to at least the years of Bill Clinton (It's the economy, stupid) place so much emphasis on economic well being and strong economy. What really gets forgotten when we center out politics on simple and mere economic well being is that creating a vibrant economy would be very easy. If the politicians would allow it, and if conservatives would stress it and actually work to implement the principles necessary for a strong economy. Let the free market take care of business.

No one person or group can effectively manage the economy. There are simply too many decisions being made by too many people day in and day out for that to be a rational possibility. Let folks alone to make their own decisions. Let them become masters of their own economy and the self discipline that would teach would find itself further manifested in self discipline in other areas of life.

Get government out of the way of the economy, too, so that it can concentrate on the areas where it is supposed to govern. Weights and measures, foreign policy, sound money, where necessary for interstate commerce; shrink at least the federal government to the point where there won't be such emphasis on things it cannot control anyway. Get it back to its Constitutional roots and watch the economy benefit.

Yes, we know. Pie in the sky. Or in fact too many hands in the government pie which do not want to leave it alone, solely for their own self interest. The regulators protect their jobs more than anything. So the Occupiers are almost right: those with the money do run the show. Only it isn't the capitalists who really own things. It's a self centered Washington, put there by a self centered voting public.

That recipe we mentioned yesterday? It's been mixed and is in the oven.