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The Government We’re Stuck With
Are you trapped in an abusive relationship with your government? Does it do all the taking and none of the giving? Has it become increasingly demanding and dependent? Today's column is "The Government We're Stuck With" -- Read Joe's columns the day he writes them.Does it refuse to admit being at fault? Does it always insist on being the dominant partner, while refusing to accept its own responsibilities? Does it run up huge bills and stick you with the payments? Is it secretive and evasive about its activities, while denying you your own space and privacy? Does it demand your undivided love, while remaining emotionally distant from you and indifferent to your basic needs?

If you answered yes to all these questions, you have a problem. In fact, you have the same problem every American taxpayer has.

What’s more, there’s no solution. If you had a spouse that behaved like your government, you could not only break free of the relationship, you might be able to collect damages or even have the offender jailed, or at least ordered to stay away from you. But the cost and inconvenience of divorcing your government is prohibitive. You have to leave your home, move far away, and start a completely new life.

For many people, the problem is aggravated by denial — the need to pretend that everything is all right because many other governments are even worse. They feel guilty if they criticize their own government, which constantly tells them how lucky they are not to be living elsewhere. It’s as if an alcoholic, adulterous wife-beater were to keep reminding his wife that she’s fortunate he’s not O.J. Simpson.

The modern state stands ready to release you from all your duties to your own family, while constantly increasing your political obligations. You can divorce your spouse, neglect your parents, abandon or abort your children. But you’d better pay your taxes, most of which will be spent for the benefit of people you’ve never met and have never agreed to support.

This system of forcing some to pay others’ way is justified as “compassion,” but it’s an inversion of the natural order of love, the family-centered affections that modern liberalism despises as narrow and selfish. It’s typical of the champions of the all-absorbing state that even as they treat the family as something a child must be protected from, they try to clothe the state itself in the warm metaphors of “family,” “community,” and “village.” ...