Last night, I entered a Facebook thread, where Republicans and Democrats were stereotyping each other–taking the actions of one or two politicians and generalizing them to everyone in their particular party. I responded this way:
It is extremely frustrating to see the national attention consumed by the issues of passionate fools on both the extreme right and left that wish to enforce their views of propriety on the rest of us. What unites them–the loony left and wacko right–is that they both wish to use government to regulate areas of life that are wholly inappropriate for government to do.
So what do we get–right wing politicians that write laws to restrict rights they do not like and left wing politicians that write laws to restrict rights they do not like. Both now buy into larger and larger government to enforce their will on the non-political class. Political parties shrink, but write laws to protect the permanency of their politicians, and most Americans find themselves at odds with a significant amount of what their government does. To cement their positions, these politicians find some stupid issue to build a career on–and people vote for these things as they are spun into a frenzy.
The important stuff (tax, education, regulation, solvency, etc.), which affects our nation’s place in the world becomes radioactive and is left on the table. Take a look at the table in the linked article in the Economist–it’s a couple of years old but still relevant. It is based on a survey on US competitiveness that has been done for at least a decade by HBS. Look at the table on the second page. Where is the US viewed to be lagging its competitors and getting worse–tax code, legal framework, political system, regulation, macro policy, and K-12 education system.
These are the things our politicians should be dealing with–note they are ALL in the appropriate realm of government and most of them have been damaged by government. Democrats and Republicans are equally at fault here–just about different things.
–BB
