May 31, 2006
Bad Government, or Praise for Bureaucracy
Oddly enough, both meanings of "bad" work when applied to government - bad in the sense of immoral and in the sense of poorly run. When I look around, I see a lot of bad government - it's bad government that is the root cause of most of the problems worldwide. Bad government leads to the famine, chaos, and war in Africa; leads to the horrible suffering of North Koreans and Cubans (among sadly too many others), and leads to the instability and turmoil in South America.
But we're seeing good government in action in Washington. No, not the clueless band of politicians that currently inhabit Congress; but the continuing demonstration that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. Yes, problems are looming like Medicare and Social Security, we are fighting a war with a nation divided, members of Congress are behaving not just irresponsibly, but criminally -- yet the economy is booming, people from the world over are trying to live here, life is good in general because governement doesn't "run" the nation, and the government itself continues to function well enough because it isn't "run" by the politicians. Come what may, we have confidence in our government to function adequately.
