The attached Twitter comment recently caught my eye. Its tone is one of disbelief, and its intent is as a head-shaking lament about President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominations. I’m sure that Ashley’s like-minded followers commiserated in their concern about the “dismantling” of the big government bureaucracies, presumably because these bureaucracies are fighting the good fight against the evil predations of unfettered capitalism.
I, on the other hand, cheered at the idea. Our government is absurdly large, excessively intrusive, and has its tentacles wrapped around far too many aspects of our lives. It has spent a century growing, with great bursts of metastatic expansion under progressive paragons like Wilson, FDR, Johnson and Obama. It is infringing on aspects of our lives it has been specifically debarred from infringing, smothering the nation’s economy, and getting in the way of our pursuit of happiness.
People have forgotten, or more likely were never taught, that government is not supposed to do everything for them. People have been inculcated with the absurdity that politicians and bureaucrats are selfless public servants, with no base human motives to interfere with their pursuit of dispassionate goodness for all. People are losing sight of Ronald Reagan’s observation:
[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Thus, if it is indeed true that “everyone Trump has picked wants to dismantle the agency they will be running,” I’d call that a great thing. I’d call it a Reaganesque act in the most positive way.
Unfortunately, it has been observed that:
The hardest creature in the universe to kill is an ongoing government program.
Politicians and bureaucrats are motivated first and foremost by job security. The former spend most of their time fundraising, gladhanding and figuring out how best to pander to the constituencies that will get them re-elected. The latter work to expand their fiefdoms and the resources under their control. It’s easy to cut a 10 person government program, it’s hard to cut a 1000 person program. The big government agencies are deeply entrenched, and are likely to have little or no interest in paring back their size, scope or power. Thus, any Trump cabinet member who seeks to “dismantle” his or her agency will be facing a herculean task.
There’s an old gag, popular among software engineers, that ironically explains away undesired behavior with “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.” If Trump’s cabinet selections truly wish to dismantle their agencies, I’d call that a feature, not a bug, without a shred of irony.
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