I don’t often agree with Ronald Reagan. I think he has been wrongly canonized by Americans who misread history. He just happened to be in charge when the Soviet Union imploded under its own economic folly, and that lucky accident glorified his legacy.
But two news stories this morning make me think he might be right when he famously said:
Government is not the solution; government is the problem.
That’s not exactly what he said; he began the sentence in his inaugural address with, “In this present crisis.” But that’s the way it is usually remembered, especially by small-government nuts who think a country could get along just fine without anyone to run things. Of course, they’re wrong.
Even Reagan knew that. His administration didn’t hesitate to impose its will on the American public. He was referring to a specific instance in which he thought the federal government should butt out, not advocating anarchy.
I have worked for governments from time to time, and they can be abusive, unfair and oppressive. But they’re necessary.
The problem is the bureaucracy – or more accurately the politicians and bureaucrats. What is it that makes some people lose every grain of common sense the moment they find themselves in authority?
Consider the governor of Florida, a Senate wannabe named Charlie Crist.
You tell me what he thinks he’s doing after you read this AP excerpt:
MIAMI – The U.S. military has halted flights carrying Haitian earthquake victims to the United States (photo above) because of an apparent cost dispute, though a doctor warned that some injured patients faced imminent death if the flights don’t resume.
The evacuations were temporarily suspended Wednesday, said Capt. Kevin Aandahl, spokesman for U.S. Transportation Command. The flights were halted a day after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (photo at left) asked the federal government to help pay for care.
However, Dr. Barth Green, a doctor involved in the relief effort in Port-au-Prince, warned that his patients needed to get to better hospitals.
“We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don’t Medevac them,” said Green, chairman of the University of Miami’s Global Institute for Community Health and Development.
Who in his right mind would think this is the time to stop saving lives and start squabbling over the tab?
Here’s another news item that shows even Haiti is afflicted with the bureaucratic curse:
A group of 10 American Baptists were being held in the Haitian capital Sunday after trying to take 33 children out of Haiti.
The church group, most of them from Idaho, allegedly lacked the proper documents when they were arrested Friday night in a bus along with children from 2 months to 12 years old who had survived the catastrophic earthquake.
The group say they were setting up an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic.
“In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told The Associated Press at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held pending a Monday hearing before a judge.
The Baptists’ “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission” was described as an effort to save abandoned, traumatized children.
We’re talking about the Haitian government – an oxymoron if ever there was one – which proved utterly useless when the earthquake ravaged Port au Prince but is now flexing its muscles to prevent orphans from getting help.
Sometimes, government is, indeed, the problem. And that’s the way it will be as long as human beings are in charge.
