Hildegarde

So it is Sunday, and I have music and Harriet Vane.

And, like I said,  I’m still not inclined to do a lot of work right now.

So, I want to make explicit the question that keeps popping into my mind.

When I talk about small government here, I am usually fairly explicit about what I mean.

I mean putting an end to government intrusion into the private decisions of private life. 

I mean things like seat belt laws, childhood obesity campaigns,  bans on Happy Meals, motorcycle helmet laws–the entire panoply of regulation and legislation meant to make us behave “for our own good” and sometimes justified by saying that “it’s for the children, and we need to protect them when their parents are stupid.”

As soon as I start talking about that here, a half dozen people start talking about evil corporations despoiling the Arctic wilderness and food safety laws meant to keep us from running into the E-boli bacteria.

But saying that the government should not be allowed to tell me I have to wear a seat belt if I ride a motorcycle, or that CPS shouldn’t be allowed to issue a degree (not voted on in any legislature) that makes spanking “child abuse,’ is not the same thing as food safety laws or the Glass-Steagal Act.

And I’m in favor of bringing back Glass-Steagal, and I think we should never have gotten rid of it.

I’d read the “study” in Michael’s article–the 43,000 corporations that supposedly “rule the world”–and I thought it silly the first time.  The article posted here said that people have had “some problems” with its methodology, but in fact they’ve had a lot of problems with its methodology.   Never mind the fact that any secret conspiracy to control everything that requires 43,000 anything to maintain is dead in the water before it starts.

But it’s still not the issue I brought up, and it still has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.

In fact, what I’m talking about makes it MORE likely that corporations will get to control your life.

There is, for instance, the new trend for courts to allow employers to demand that you behave OFF the job the way they want you to–that you not only not smoke at work, but not smoke at home, either.

To me, this amounts to a reinstitution of slavery.  In a captialist economy, I sell my time to my employer, and when I’m off the clock what I do is none of his business.

But since the government already thinks of me as a child whose behavior has to be manipulated and regulated even in the confines of my own home, it naturally enough sees nothing wrong with my employer controlling my behavior in the same way.

And in what way will the food supply be threatened if we require OSHA to enforce laws and not make them?  Or if we insist that OSHA has no right to issue regulations with the force of law that will allow them to enter my private residence at will and inspect my home office to make sure it meets “safety standards”?

The OSHA thing isn’t something I made up, by the way.  They tried that on a few years ago and had to back down because of public outcry.  But they have not retreated on their position that they have a right to make such inspections of my home.

And that they do not have to follow any form of due process, do not have to have probably cause that I’ve committed a crime, and do not have to have a warrant.

If the history of bureaucracies is any judge, they will float the idea every year or so until they manage to get it through when nobody is looking.

And, if they ever do, there will be no more Gregors.

I cannot sit in ergonomic chairs.  My back just won’t handle it.  This already bars me from being hired for all kinds of things I am qualified to do–nope, OSHA says you have to sit in that chair, you can’t sit in that chair and you can’t work–but if such a rule was carried into my own home, I wouldn’t be able to work at all.  No more sitting at the computer.  No more writing in the morning.  And what am I complaining about?  It’s for my own good.  I must only think I can’t use those chairs.  They’re really better for me than the one I do use, and I’m just to stupid (or have too little common sense) to know it.

I will say, however, that even if I didn’t have a problem with those chairs, I’d still be opposed both to OSHA being able to issue such a regulation that would have the force of law, and for any agency of the government, federal or state or local, to be able to enter my private home without that warrant or probably cause.

I will also say that I find it very curious that so many of the people I know who call themselves liberals, and who would have a complete raging fit if the cops entered an apartment without warrant or probable cause to look for weapons or drugs–find nothing wrong with this kind of thing.

I had a friend of mine tell me, very earnestly, that you didn’t need things like warrants and due process for these things, because they were “helping” and not prosecuting, and that unlike police officers, who were mostly bad and brutal and racist, social workers had good intentions and were trained to know how to handle these situations.

For what it’s worth, this is the big issue with the Tea Party, the one that Democrats get wrong.  When they’re talking about “big government,” they’re not talking about health and safety standards for handling raw meat.

They’re talking about the nattering, nitpicking, endless micromanagement of their private lives and the lives of their communities.

We complain in this country that too many people are apathetic, or that they’re “low information voters.”

But they’re apathetic because they have nothing to be enthused about.  If they go to the polls and vote for the local school board, what does it mean?  It means that they get to run their school by rules they disapprove of that were made somewhere else by people they did not elect and whose judgment they don’t trust.

And they’re not “low information,” either.  They’re just taking a calculated gamble.

Shrinking government just MIGHT get rid of some of those micromanaging rules.

A politician who wants to expand government might do a lot of things they like–universal health care, for instance–but he’ll almost certainly use that expansion to put even more of those rules in place that they want to get rid of.

Liberty before security.

Every time.

I’m going to go listen to Bach.