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Ruminations on the Role of Government

A state trooper has been ordered to stand watch outside the nurse's home as a media horde has descended on the sleepy Maine town near the Canadian border.
The spectacle of the Maine nurse not complying with quarantine, followed by a Maine court ruling it unenforceable, has led to thoughts about the role of government and our political parties.

The parties have different conceptions of government and its role. Each exaggerates the ideas of its opponent to produce a caricature against which it can run, a straw man argument. For the Republicans it is Democrats as closet socialists, using government to control what we can say and do, regulating industry and commerce to produce their idea of what is desirable. For the Democrats, it is Republicans as closet Christian crusaders, attempting to impose religious views on a secular country while financing breaks for the rich by taxes on the poor.

These artificial and distorted images lead to odd contradictions between the image and the reality. Republicans are commonly chided for wanting to assert a fetus is alive while being willing to randomly kill enemies with smart weapons and criminals by execution. Democrats are roasted for their support for the poor and working person expressed at expensive dinners given by wealthy patrons. But what prompts this little item is the bizarre image of Democrats sticking up for the Maine nurse refusing to cooperate with quarantine.

It is odd to have a government that sends our soldiers to fight an epidemic and insists on their quarantine upon returning home and does not insist on the same quarantine for returning healthcare workers. It is also odd to listen to staunch Democrats advocate for state regulation of coal, carbon and the environment while defending the 'right' of an individual to resist quarantine for protecting others. These are not straw man arguments; that is real policy.

I favor Republican fiscal policy and Libertarian social policy. I reject the foolish imagery used to pillory Democrats in the media, but in fact their policies are a jumble of volte-face self-contradiction. I think the reason is an inherent contradiction between Democratic ideals and the reality of governance and international affairs.

The Democratic party is rooted not so much in the coalition of Roosevelt as it is in social rebellion of the 60s. Big corporations are bad, individual freedom is good, helping the little guy is right, as is taxing the big guy. But somehow, running a government ends up requiring the support of the big guys and corporations. Democrats are caught between their rhetoric and the realpolitik of governance.

And so we come back to our Ebola nurse. She is applauded for resisting unwarranted personal imposition by government even as that same government quarantines men sent by its fiat to serve in an epidemic zone. Two bad decisions end up putting people at risk for nothing. Our military are reduced from fighters to policemen to quarantine enforcers in a foreign country, and we do not require the same restraint of our own citizens.

This is just a microcosm of what I see as the repeated wrong-headedness of the current Democratic administration. Policy after policy is foolish, grounded in belief and ideology rather than reality. Carbon taxes are imposed unilaterally without public or Congressional support. Production of oil is slowed or halted and environmental regulation prevents us from refining our own oil, but we have no policy to encourage nuclear use in the name of the environment. We oppose Syria, decline to aid rebels fighting the Syrian government, then elevate their status when another group threatens the puppet government in Iraq which is all we have to show for years of intervention.

Our Ebola nurse is only a prominent social symbol of gross political error. A large proportion of Americans think we are on the wrong track. They are right. Until we have a cohesive set of policies based on reality rather than our own hype, we will be doomed to more circus sideshows of foolish choices and behavior, of which our Ebola nurse is merely a red-headed poster child.

Ted

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