This was the signature on my cell phone text messages. And after seeing it hundreds of times, hundreds of text messages I decided to write a blog post about it. A friend asked me what this message meant and to give you a simple answer this is what I sent back, however I will go into more detail about why big government equals a sad face. "It means that when we have bigger government that life is sadder, big government is what we have now with lots of programs and generally higher taxes and consequently less freedom, that when we have a small government that doesn't interfere with our lives we have more freedom in our lives and more happiness and some people suffer and that's sad for them but people have control over their life and its their choice." This blog post will be broken up into three parts: part one will be different definitions of big and small government, part two will be why limited or small government is a good thing, and big government is a bad thing, and the third part will be different quotes from different people about big and small government.
Part One
According to Wikipedia, a small government is, "A Small government is one which minimizes its own activities. In its "perfect" form, minarchism, the state confines itself to foreign policy, defense and law while leaving other activities to local government, companies and individuals."
Wikipedia defines big government as, "Big government (sometimes capitalized as Big Government) is a term used to describe a government which is considered to be excessively large, corrupt and inefficient, or inappropriately involved in certain areas of public policy. In this latter sense, the term may also be used by political liberals in relation to government policies which attempt to regulate matters considered to be private or personal, such as private sexual behavior."
Limited government is a government where any more than minimal governmental intervention in personal liberties and the economy is not usually allowed by law, usually in a written Constitution. It is closely related to free market libertarianism and some tendencies of classical liberalism and conservatism in the United States. The theory of limited government contrasts with the idea that government should intervene to promote equality and opportunity through regulation of property and wealth redistribution.(Wikipedia)
This goes along with the idea of laissez-faire which is "a doctrine opposing governmental interference in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace and property rights, a philosophy or practice characterized by a usually deliberate abstention from direction or interference especially with individual freedom of choice and action."(Merriam-Webster Dictionary) This word comes from the french laissez faire, which means let the people do as they choose.
Part Two
Government is not a bad thing, we need our government, however we need them in their place, which isn't our lives. This is the inherent danger of having a bigger government. Passing a law that bans smoking from restaurants and such doesn't sound so bad. Same goes for a ban on selling junk food in schools. It sounds so nice, it's good, it's for the people, it's for the students. But what often times people don't think about is that these harmless laws are quite harmful. They slowly chip away at our freedoms. Don't we as individuals have the right to choose if we want to go in a restaurant or business that has smoking going on? I as an individual know that if I go in a bar people will be smoking in there, I choose to put myself at risk for secondhand smoke. Don't high school students have the choice to decide if they want to eat junk food from vending machines? Or maybe we are all just to stupid to make these decisions. Well I don't think that we are, and yes there are some people out there that can't make good decisions, however they still have the freedom to make a stupid decision. Some people are attracted to Big Government because you know like England, they have higher taxes but they have multiple programs and give out so much money. Maybe I'm alone in this opinion, but I would rather have my own money and decide what to do with it. Many of these people use these emotional rallying cries. Example with the health care reform well think of all the people suffering without health care, because those mean, evil insurance companies wouldn't give them insurance. Or under the Bush Administration, with the health care bill to cover more children, think of the children!! I remember when I said I didn't support it more than one person accused me of not liking children. But at the end of the day we give up certain freedoms for all the laws that government wants to pass. And when Big Government gets involved in the economy, we all just need to run for cover. Every time the government tries to help the economy, well they get the opposite result, when the government tries to help anybody, or anything they get the opposite result from what the want. I'll make an equation for you.
:) = people + hard work + love + God
When you substitute government for anyone you, the equation derails.
:( = people + government + love + God
:( = people + hard work + government + God
:( = people + hard work + love + government
Think about it, they want to help education, they ruined it. They want to help the economy, nothing so far has happened. Well I take that back the unemployment rate went down 0.1% which makes the president and vice-president happy. They try to make health care better, just wait. I remember an episode of a cartoon I used to watch where this kids mom wanted to have a pretty garden but she couldn't and so Timmy wished that his mom could grow stuff in a garden and his fairy godparents made his wish come true. But in this episode before the wish, you see the mom standing in her yard she picks up a flower and immediately it dies and she starts to cry and says, "everything I touch dies!!" I equate the government to this when they try to fix something, or make it better. Everything they touch blows up in their faces, and do you know who are the real losers in that? Us. Can we all stop being the losers in the politicians game of who can fix what? Can we all tell them to stop??? Maybe I'm the only one, maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm all alone in my opinions, but I don't think that's the way it is. I don't want or need the government. When was the government here to give people what they want or need? The government is here to protect us(hence the police, EMS, fire department, not health care), make treaties, deal with other countries, that kind of stuff. Not to make programs to help people get a home, to get money for college, to tell us what is bad for us to eat, to give us free health care. It's called hard work. And just like it says, sometimes, a lot of times it's hard. I have a scholarship that pays for tuition, but I have to buy books, I have to save money for when I transfer out of the community college because I don't get much in the way of financial aid. I have to work at McDonalds. And sometimes I absolutely HATE it. But it's helping me get where I need to go isn't it????? Or I could sit around and wait for the government to give me money, or just as great, wait for it to fall from the sky! I want to be a lawyer, which means that I need to get my undergraduate degree as cheaply as possible which is why I go to a community college, which is why I most likely will live at home and go to the four year school in the city I live in. And as friends have pointed out, I miss some of the college experience, I don't live on campus, I don't have a ton of free time to hang out with my friends. But I have to do what I have to do to be a lawyer. Hard work and sacrificing don't always feel good, many times I see on Facebook are talking about going out with friends and hanging in the dorms and all this fun stuff. Sometimes I miss that, I miss what I can't do because five nights a week I'm at McDonalds. But you got to do what you got to do. Even when it sucks. And that is what many people in this country need to realize. My parents waited for like 20 years to buy their first house, they wanted to do it years ago, but financially it would have been a dumb decision. So they didn't, they went without. A lot of times people in general want something, but they don't want to put out the effort to get it. And it's not the governments job to give us what we want but don't want to work for. I don't want the governments help, because one day when I graduate law school, I'll know it was my achievement, that I did it on my work, my sacrifice, it will be my victory, mine. And that and God keeps me going.
Part Three
"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." Thomas Jefferson
"I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.-Thomas Jefferson
Most bad government has grown out of too much government.-Thomas Jefferson
The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.-Thomas Jefferson
Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -- Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (A.D. c.56-c.115)
"The more prohibitions th
ere are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be." -- Lao-tzu, The Tao Te Ching (believed written in China, 6th century BC).
It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.”
Robert H. Jackson quotes
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_government
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_government
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0291c.asp
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/yardstick/pr5.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_government
Thomas Jefferson Quote- http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff130495.html
http://www.fightthebias.com/Quotes/thomas_jefferson.htm
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/quotes12.html
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/government/
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