Well, since it appears that the U.S. stock market isn’t going to crash — yet — this morning — okay, for the next couple of hours, at least — I’m going to sit down and take up a much more serious, but slower-paced, problem that’s been on my mind. I’m talking about the national, even global plague of “do somethingness.”
You know how people are always trying to find solutions to gigantic problems, and (because their only tool is government), making a worse mess of everything? Blame “do somethingness.” If we could only end the “do something” plague, clever, independent people might actually set about coming up with real solutions to real-world messes.
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My mother was a fan of government — the bigger the better. The daughter of a man who ran for office as a Socialist, she was also a worshipper at the shrine of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She praised his New Deal to the skies and honestly believed, despite all evidence, that this conniving aristocrat “cared about the little people.”
I may have inherited Mom’s political gene, but by age 10 or so, I began seeing the world differently. By my teens, when mothers and daughters are often at big-time odds, we butted heads over politics, both contemporary and historic. One question I asked, “If Roosevelt’s economic policies were so effective, how come the Depression just got worse for years and didn’t end until World War II?”
Mom would argue and temporize, but ultimately, she didn’t have a persuasive response to that question. Tempers would rise until she would finally burst out with her end-all-arguments answer: “Well, at least he DID SOMETHING!”
And that’s the problem. And not just with Roosevelt — and Bush II — and Obama — whose meddling prolongs and distorts what would otherwise be a painful, but brief, economic self-correction. It’s a problem with virtually every serious hot-button issue in the political world, right, left, and otherwise. The plague of “do somethingness” enables bigger and more tyrannical government at every level.
Like so:
1. Whipped up by the media, by “leaders,” or sometimes just by their own passions, millions cry for government to “do something!” about a situation.
2. Government responds by concocting thousands of pages of arcane, opaque legislation and regulation, whose long-term implications are unknown but which, you can be sure, give power to those who already have power and give riches to those with powerful friends.
3. The original “do something!” group uncritically supports the proposed law or regulation. They urge it forward. They cheer it on. They vote for those who propagate it.
4. To anyone who argues against the proposal, the “do somethings” respond with endless, passionate discourses — not about the specific effects of the oncoming new rules — whether they’ll work as advertised, whether they’ll destroy freedom — but only about the problem they perceive. “We need regulation because Wall Street is out of control!” “We have to have health-care reform because costs are soaring!” “Something has to be done because illegal immigration is destroying the country!”
5. Any attempt to get the “do somethings” to focus on the actual content and potential pitfalls of the new rules will be met with a wall of resistance. They simply don’t care. All that matters is “doing something.” Worse yet, if you continue to argue against the government’s new plan, then you must be “a pawn of Wall Street” or “in favor of uncontrolled costs” or “a fuzzy-headed liberal” or “a cold-hearted right-winger.” Or whatever. Everything is white (them) or black (you).
6. The law or regulation will be adopted. Things will get worse. There will be calls to “do something!” Rinse and repeat.
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The fact that “do somethingness” never, ever solves problems and always creates worse ones is lost on the “do something” crowd.
Did Prohibition turn the nation sober? No, it didn’t. But it did give unprecedented opportunity to organized crime.
Did the New Deal end the Depression? Nope. But it did create vast, permanent new bureaucracies.
Have decades of financial regulation prevented Wall Street shenanigans and crashes? You tell me. But those regs have created sinecures for thousands of parasites. Yeah, it must be nice to be paid $200,000 per year to download porn while the guys you’re supposed to regulate rape the land.
Did Cold War hysteria make us safer? Or freer? No, but it sure did give a boost to the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about — and set the stage for a permanent, and profitable, state of war. Halliburton and the company formerly known as Blackwater can thank the “better dead than red” knee-jerkers and their “they hate us for our freedom” descendants for their billions.
Did the War on Poverty end poverty? Au contraire. Poverty, which had been dropping at a dramatic rate before Johnson’s Great Society, suddenly stabilized. It has remained at a near-constant rate since the late 1960s. But now we have even more gigantic bureaucracies and a permanent, government-subsidized underclass petulantly demanding — and voting for politicians who’ll deliver — its “entitlements.”
Did the drug war curb recreational drug use? Don’t be silly. But it stole our rights, turned police into ruthless military forces, and set a deadly crime war on our borders and in our cities.
Will Obamacare reduce costs and improve health care in the U.S.? Ha ha ha. But oooooh, the joys of centralized power!
Did the border wall, or the “virtual border wall” halt the passage of illegals? What a joke. But every, single failed measure against those funny-talking brown people moves us closer to national ID — which is the ultimate point.
Will national ID ensure us a peaceful life, free from terrorists, identity fraud, and those pesky brown folk? Ha ha ha. But thanks to the “do something!” crowd, national ID is what we’ll eventually get.
But in each case, these disastrous historic measures were (and are) supported by a loud, passionate group of “do something!” advocates who didn’t think out the consequences, but only cried for action at any cost.
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Part of me wonders why I’m writing this. Those who’ll get it … well, already do get it without being nudged along by the likes of me.
Those who don’t get it — the “do something!” crowd — will never get it. Because they don’t want to get it. Left, right, or otherwise, they’re so fixated on whatever problem they perceive that they’ll refuse forever to look at the consequences of government “solutions.” Details be damned: As long as somebody in government promises to “do something,” that’s good enough for them.
Then, when that fails … when government gets bigger and freedom shrinks … they’ll be right in there crying for yet another government fix.
The sad, sad irony of all this is that, as often as not, the “do somethings” claim to be in favor of greater freedom and smaller government. Sure … just as soon as big government has stopped the illegals or bombed Iran into the stone age or whatever. Then we’ll have limited constitutional government and the blessings of freedom.
But left or right, it really doesn’t matter. It’s the same mentality.
I swear, if we could solve one problem to really change the world in a positive way, it would be the problem of “do somethingness.” If people would stop thinking that way — stop accepting any damn thing government does, as long as its done under a pretense that they like — the world would be a different, saner, freer place.
And some problems might actually get solved.
