The Problem With the Right's "Small Government" Myth

For many years now the Republican machine, including those in power, and the army of right wing radio hosts, TV verbal assassins (i.e. O'Reilly and his ilk), and Fox News have been spouting the call for smaller government. They have also been trying to tie together the notion that government intervention and "big government" are the same, and that together they mean higher taxes for everyday people.

Well, folks, one doesn't have to look very far to see today's example of such Republicans with campaign bullhorns shouting the same old story. Just listen to any current McCain or Palin stump speech. We're the mavericks, and we're going to put an end to big government, they say. Setting the maverick issue aside here for a moment, let's look at where all of this talk about smaller government has led us.

I am in my 50's and so remember the America of the past. That American country, one of Democratic and Republican presidents and periods of movement to the right and the left was a nation to be cherished. We had our problems, and I could name many, but our food supply was safe, our banking and economic system were solid and an example for the entire world, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) tried to get dangerous products off the market, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used real science to guide its decisions. That America is gone, Scarlet, "gone with the wind", and the wind was the call for "smaller government".

The magic word I am about to use is that right wing boogeyman: REGULATION. Let me tell you something, if regulation will keep our food safe, keep our economic and banking system dependable and reliable, and result in good drugs that work being on the market, then I am all for it. We don't need melamine in our pet food or baby formula, we don't need meat with unkillable mad cow prions in it, we don't need chicken with salmonella, and we don't need an economic system based on the bundling of bad-risk loans into A-rated securities that turn out to be worth little more than the paper they are printed on. There is a single, proven solution to these types of problems, and that is regulation, government regulation.

We don't need smaller government. Just listen to the news or read the paper and you can see that our country is rife with problems caused by the absence of government regulation. We need wiser government. Government has a job, and when it fails to do its job, the result is a more dangerous society for all of us.