Servants and Masters

My vast experience has not included employing servants, but my impression is that it is extremely rare that house servants dictate how the house is run, how the budget is spent, and I think the servants are almost never wealthier than their employer.

So, how can career politicians, or even career bureaucrats or other government workers claim to be public servants? The run of the mill public employee makes more than the average citizen who is allegedly the employer. The elected officials not only make more, but they have special health insurance and pensions. They are even exempt from various rules and requirements which they place on the citizenry who hired them.

Well, anyone who buys that bit about public service from a salaried employee probably has a skewed view of economics, and free trade. Or trade of any kind. It happens. The ring of self righteousness, with overtones of free floating, non denominational religiosity must hit some emotion in people; especially those who either see themselves as the proper leaders of the "masses", or see themselves as needing a paternal authority to keep them safe and in line.

All this stuff about whether I am better off now than I was however many years ago is lost on me. I've never imagined it to be government's job to make me better or worse off, just to protect my freedom and property. Unfortunately, not too many in that business see their role as I do. I was better off in the late '80s, but I wasn't financially more secure.

I'd finally become free of alcohol and dope and stupid bars. I had more potential girlfriends than I knew how to address, and I was only alone when I wanted it that way. Of course, I was still too nuts to know what was going on, but it was a happy time. I'm fairly certain the only role in those great days that government played was that it played almost no role. There was no talk of buy-or-die insurance or much else that involved me.

It is too bad that the choice for the big show is not between radical libertarians and the usual collectivist minded people who want control of everything. As it is, we have the modified version of Neo-Bolshevik vs the radical version.

Buzz words fill the air like a swarm of yellow jackets. "The right to collective bargaining" refers not to rights but to requirements. People can and have banded together to bargain collectively for years and years. The right to bargain individually is what is threatened. The above buzz phrase is code for forced unionism. If you don't want to join, you have no choice in many places. Freedom to choose is the basic tenet of a free society. Not so complicated but the very smart, and the not so smart, can cloud and embellish and complicate the hell out of it.

That is just one example of something that is misleading and really ought not be on the table.

In the end, what we see happening, since the misnamed "public servants" have so much power to issue directives, pay themselves to then promote their candidates for office through public employee unions, make more money than most other people, and are increasing in number relative to non government workers, the so-called servants are actually the public masters and we become the servants. They also have the weapon of the IRS to harass enemies and influence the stubborn. That is why neither of our two viable choices for major office push too hard, if at all, to change that system. It is a horrible tax structure, which most people know, although some think it for less than valid reasons.

I would be so proud of my country if one of the major applicants for the top administrative position adamantly insisted the irs must go and be replaced with a consumption tax or something like it that did not penalize income directly. It would be a start, and I think that is the root of most of what makes the idea of a police state, at best, a realistic threat in this country.
They, of course, need to quit pandering by declaring wars on drugs, obesity, and God only knows what else.

And there is no win on abortion. It is a cultural issue which needs to be left at impasse.
Call it legal murder if you must, but lead by example if you think you are right, and let it go. No one should be forced to perform it or have the operation--unless I declare them unfit to reproduce--and just get it out of my face. I still bear a grudge at those holy rollers with their signs as they stood too close to the right hand lane on a busy street in Greensboro, and I'm trying to figure out how to explain what they are doing to a five year old girl in my car. Geez, do you think you actually did any good? You hurt your case more than help.

Freedom requires some real discipline when it comes to knowing people do things of which you do not approve. Most of those things are best curbed by the tenor of the culture. And that is what frustrates people. They want to force others to choose what they want them to. I don't think that method has ever worked out very well, but there are those who believe all behavior can be altered through force or taxation, and that it is OK, because they know what is best for others.

To the point. Those who call themselves public servants, who have served four or five terms in the senate or wherever, are only telling the truth if what they mean by servant is master.