Throwing out the baby with the bath water

To the Editor;
We should all hate Government? Last week we were treated to an opinion piece from a fellow who claims to represent a “Free Market Think Tank” entitled “Time to apply the enemies test to government”.
The gist of his argument seems to be: Republicans hate the government when Democrats are in power, and Democrats hate the government when Republicans are in power. So people on both sides should join together to limit any power of the government. For example, he suggests that since liberals are so offended at the new Secretary of Education, liberals should join conservatives in pushing to eliminate the entire Education Department. Huh? A department secretary somebody doesn’t like, means we should eliminate the entire department? Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water!
I have an alternative: How about making sure we have an Education Department that does the things that, by law, it’s supposed to do? If the laws don’t serve our needs, we have representatives who can change the law. In other words, a good place to start is for everyone to insist on good government — one that represents us and gives each of us a real shot at deciding for ourselves how much or how little Education Departments we need. “Big government vs. Small Government” is the wrong argument. We need to talk first about good government.
One of the goals of “Free Market Think Tanks” is to eliminate any restrictions on the “Free Market” (read large multi-national corporations). All too often these days the only thing standing in the way of looting unfettered capitalism (and another melt-down like in 2007 — how’d that turn out?), is government.
Any civil society needs at least some government to function. The very definition of “government” is how we the people sort out our differences and live and work together. No matter what size government is, we’re always going to need one. At bottom, it needs to honestly and fairly give us citizens the opportunity to live and work together. Right now, I believe that many of us, on both sides, are convinced that our government is not giving us that chance. Our government doesn’t work for us. It works for the very multi-national corporations that hire “Free Market Think Tanks” to do their bidding.
Let’s start working together to make government work for us again! Contact me any time. Let’s talk.
Chris Maas
Dover-Foxcroft