A cleaning of the house

Maybe people are realizing now that absolute power corrupts absolutely?

Those among us who follow politics from the conservative perspective - or at least give the headlines more than a cursory look - were the victims of a shock and awe project on Monday: shocked that the FBI was conducting a raid on the home of a former President, and in awe of just how lawless the current regime seems to be. Something that’s usually taken care of through endless haggling between attorneys instead took the time of over thirty FBI agents who entered a house when they knew the occupant was out of town. I doubt they cleaned up behind themselves, either.

This raid occurred in the wake of the Senate passing a bill - ironically called the Inflation Reduction Act even though economists claim it will do nothing of the sort - to spend another $800 billion. In and of itself, that’s not news anymore as our government doesn’t seem to have the capability to live within its means and prefers to spend its money sans official budget, but by reconciliation and continuing resolution. One line item that stuck out, though: spending billions on hiring over 80,000 new personnel for the IRS, already the world’s largest collection agency. It reminds me of the line in the Declaration of Independence, where the Founders write in reference to King George III, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” What little substance we have is on its way to the belly of the beast.

Addressing the size of government has been a recurring theme of mine over the years, and one analogy I like to use is that of Washington being a honey pot, with all the bears trying to get their greedy little paws into it. But that analogy doesn’t explain all the worker bees who are dependent on the hive, many of whom live in Maryland and Virginia and make a mess of their state-level politics.

These worker bees get big upset when you begin to mess with their hive, and that’s one thing that Donald Trump - and more importantly, his voters - were threatening to do. The same was true of the TEA Party when it came onto the scene during the Obama administration, and we saw what happened to them, particularly when it came to the IRS.

So what’s an average Joe who wants as little as possible to do with the government to do? I’m going to suggest voting this fall as a first step, since there’s a very good chance conservatives can at least take back the House. At that point, GOP leadership has all but announced their intention to use their investigative authority against all manner of Biden administration officials, who will of course do everything to can to lie, obfuscate, and duck the questions - if they even show up anyway.

But more important to me is the idea of seizing the narrative. We’ve been conditioned our whole lives to believe that government is a public servant, but now it’s time to recast them (truthfully) as a parasite. Instead of giving us service, they act as a redistributor of wealth. Instead of protecting us from foreign and domestic enemies, they act as if the people are just subjects and that we’re their enemy. (Just ask parents who speak out at school board meetings.) It’s an entity that’s not batting an eye at spending $800 billion on a boondoggle when, at a time not all that long ago - my freshman year in college, so only about forty years - that sum was the entirety of federal spending. (And even then, we ran significant federal deficits that, at the time, were blamed on tax cuts that benefitted the common people and not on runaway spending that accrued to the bees in the DC hive. See how the narrative works?)

But I don’t want to blow smoke up your backside - know that rightsizing the government is not going to be an easy or quick process. We’re doing this for our kids and grandkids because people like me won’t be around to reap the benefits of completely reining in the federal government, even if we began today. It would probably take two terms for a President to undo the damage done by Joe Biden in less than two years because those bees dependent on the honey pot aren’t just going to let us take it away and lot of people will be stung in the attempt. Now imagine the effort to undo century’s worth of damage that stems from the creation of the Federal Reserve and passage of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments. It may never get done, but for the sake of our nation and the American Dream of our Founders it’s up to us to at least try.

There’s still time to do this via the ballot. I pray that we don’t have to do this by the bullet, but, sad to say, the possibility is there if this keeps up.