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H.L. Mencken wrote the quote in this blog title in a 1923 essay for The American Mercury magazine. I would submit that Mr. Mencken was directionally correct in his assessment. Now, let’s compare Mencken’s assessment with what we see today in the Federal Government. We would have to conclude that our current condition is three orders-of-magnitude worse. Here’s why: The Federal Budget was about $3 billion in the 1920s, and today, the Federal Budget is approximately $4 trillion. By any measure, today’s Federal Government has become what I have termed in other blogs, “the impossible monster.”
I want to reinforce what I have written above with another quote, this one by Eric Hoffer. Mr. Hoffer wrote in one of his superb small books, something like the following: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and ends up as a racket.” That last term is an excellent descriptor for our Federal Government at present.
Our situation continues to take repeated turns for the worse, as we wage our wars on poverty, drugs, inequality, and terror. With the passing of the Patriot Act and the spying by the NSA in waging war against the latter, we have moved steadily along on Hayek’s so-called “Road to Serfdom.” I, for one, do not like what I am seeing in our country today with the loss of our freedoms.
Over the last 120 years, America has been led astray, or to put it more correctly and precisely, America’s leaders have led us astray. It is time we found our way back to our core values, our principles, and our traditions as a constitutional republic.
To that end, I would offer the following revision of Mr. Mencken’s pithy quote, to wit: Government, today, has not only become too strong, but it has also become too intrusive and too dangerous as well.