Why I Like a Big and Powerful Federal Government

Thanks, Dude!

That I’m flying to L.A. on Wednesday got me thinking about how casually we moderns go up in the air in those giant tubes of metal, which led me straight back to the ground and why I love it, and from there to gratitude that flying is safe mostly because there’s the FAA, and finally to why, on balance, I like the federal government to be big and powerful.

Sure, when mismanaged, or in the wrong hands (like, say, Dick Cheney’s), big government violates human rights, and things can go terribly wrong to the point of oppression. On a more mundane level, paralyzing inefficiency can take over. Our federal government, however, is probably no more oppressive or inefficient than such big centralized governments from the past as the Persian or Roman Empires, or those multiple French Louis’s and their aristocratic coteries who ruled for centuries with crushing contempt for the peasantry. Moreover, unless one wants to return to primitive conditions, or pretend one lives in the 18th century, living a modern life requires a large federal government. Period. Yet to listen to today’s screaming-mimi Tea Partyers, the federal government today, and the Obama administration in particular, is tyranny incarnate.

Below is a list of ten good things we have only because of our large federal government:

1. The Internet. This was invented not by entrepreneurs, everybody, but by the United States military.
2. The Apollo program, culminating in the most marvelous of modern moments, Neil Armstrong’s famous words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” (Yes, I too had to learn after the event that the word “a” was in there.”)
3. Interstate highways. Thank you, Eisenhower. True, the invention of the automobile was the work of that vicious genius Henry Ford. And many think the interstate highway system led us in the wrong direction (so to speak) by making us dependent on automobiles and trucks instead of rail transportation. But imagine driving from New York to Florida without the interstate, and one instantly sees the benefits.
4. Social Security. A federal system of retirement payments for old people prevents those of us who are not yet old, or not poor, from having to step over old people while they lie dying in the streets.
5. Medicare. Ditto the above.
6. The National Weather Service. I leave it to your imagination if each state handled weather by itself, or worse, if weather reporting were in the hands of private entrepreneurs. We’d never know if there were storms approaching if the paid advertisers included the tourist industry.
7. National Parks. Without the federal government, there’d be no Yellowstone, no Bryce Canyon, no Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial.
8. Free museums in Washington, D.C., all paid for by the Feds. Washington is the only city in the country where you can take your family from one museum to another without paying any admission fees.
9. The FBI.  Lefties may not like this choice, because the FBI has done some very bad things, and presumably is still doing them (J. Edgar Hoover, for example, was a tyrant, over and out). But should you get kidnapped and taken across state lines (this happens), the FBI will be there for you.
10. Progressive Federal Income Tax. Without this, states would set up a race to the bottom in terms of income tax, and all the rich people and corporations would continuously be on the move to take advantage of tax breaks. Meanwhile, everybody else, who is not rich, would need to continuously pull up stakes in order to follow them. Normal citizens would be even more frazzled chasing jobs than they already are.

And now here’s a list of ten things we don’t have because of our large federal government:

1. Lots and lots of plane crashes. (This one I’ll be thinking about on my way to the airport Wednesday.)
2. Thalidomide victims (thank you to the FDA, back in the 1960s, for this one).
3. Segregation (it doesn’t take a big imagination to figure out what some states would have done without the intervention of the federal government).
4. Runs on banks.
5. Endless Love Canals, without anyone or any company ever being held accountable.
6. Employees suffering work-related injuries and diseases without employers being held accountable.
7. Fire fighters unwilling to cross state lines during forest fires.
8. Easy transportation, without the need for passports, within the United States.
9. No disaster relief save for what a particular neighborhood, area or state can muster.
10. No food stamps to help out the one in five American families who live below the poverty line.

Me, I like having a big and powerful federal government.