A Fundamental Disconnect

Hollywood and the media routinely offer up two standard portrayals of government officials -- inept and comical idiots or sinister characters: bureaucrats are either hilarious nincompoops or dangerous evil-doers, and amazingly enough, sometimes both at once.

However, the people who hold these convictions are the exact same people who want to turn over the operation of all the key components of the country to the government to manage. Health care, energy, education, the economy itself -- these and dozens of other critical features of American society should be directed, according to the Left, from the hallowed halls in which the bumblers and betrayers work.

Is there not a fundamental disconnect here? What could possibly explain this self-contradictory faith in the power of the government to successfully solve the nation's problems?

I will offer three explanations and then speculate as to which applies to the celebrity who now occupies the White House.

The first explanation is ignorance.

The people of our nation have been subjected to an intense liberal indoctrination for so long that there are a huge number of them for whom the tenets of liberalism are so deeply ingrained that they accept without question the proposition that the government must address any problem that arises anywhere in America.

Under a relentless assault from the liberal dominated media, educational establishment, legal profession, arts community, foundations, and even segments of the business and religious communities, many have succumbed to the brainwashing.

Consequently, they believe:

• FDR's New Deal saved us from the Depression rather than prolonged it;
• the Great Society helped to lift minorities out of poverty, rather than institutionalizing it;
• capitalism creates unjust, inequitable outcomes in the US, ignoring the fact that it has powered our economy to unimagined and unequaled heights of prosperity;
• government creates jobs by spending the tax payer's money, rather than preventing their creation because of the tax dollars pilfered from entrepreneurs;
• government regulations improve the functioning of our economy, revealing obliviousness to the enormous drag they impose;
• the rich don't pay their fair share, whereas in fact the "rich" pay the overwhelming majority of the income tax that Uncle Sam extracts, while the lowest 40% of income earners pay virtually nothing;
• the Constitution is a malleable document that serves as a guide to the making of law -- in fact, it is a binding document that can be changed only by a demanding Amendment process and the American republic has survived and prospered precisely because continuing generations have agreed to abide by the deal struck by our founders with the people;
• radical change not adherence to tradition, is the American way.

I venture that a large proportion, perhaps a substantial majority of the folks who voted for Obama fit into this category -- especially young people... [snip]

It is legitimate to ask how such people can accept the portrayal of the government as bumbling or sinister or both, while somehow avoiding the inescapable conclusion, if their first premise is true, that it is lunacy to entrust our welfare to these same bumblers and evil-doers?

[Why I frequently use the word 'delusion' when attempting to describe 'liberal logic'. The first of 3 reasons explored/explained - Highly Recommended > ]

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