Maybe it’s just me, but there is something very disturbing about the recent media blitz of “broken government” stories just days after an anti-government extremist (terrorist?) flew his plane into the offices of the IRS in Austin Texas. In spite of his rambling and desperate manifesto, the suicide pilot was no hero - he was only a tax cheat hiding behind a cloak of patriotism. In spite of the belligerent selfishness that passes for patriotism in some circles these days, the truly patriotic American is community-minded and willing to do his part and pay his share – he doesn’t shirk his duty to contribute to the common good. Nobody likes a freeloader.
As frequently as the phrase “city on a hill” is invoked by those who oppose paying their taxes and reject social programs, we might expect that they had read John Winthrop’s 1630 “A Modell of Christian Charity,” a founding American document that emphasizes the biblical values of community and social responsibility. Contrary to the selfish patriot approach, Winthrop wrote that “it appears plainly that noe man is made more honourable than another or more wealthy &c., out of any particular and singular respect to himselfe, but for the glory of his creator and the common good of the creature, man.” Our original patriotic values emphasized individual responsibility for community welfare and an awareness that our wealth does not make us more important or worthy than our neighbors but is meant for the “common good.”
Anti-government rhetoric appeals to a misguided sense of the romantic when it solemnly invokes the Founding Fathers with a fundamentalist reading of the Constitution. But the brilliance the Constitution they composed is that it evolves as we have evolved beyond our primitive days when the natives were fair game, slavery was an acceptable way to maximize profit and women had no status.
Like all of us, the suicide pilot had no doubt heard the litanies of slogan slinging politicians as they cynically condemned the very system from which they derive great benefit. Unfortunately the anti-government zealot didn’t notice this glaring hypocrisy in his disturbed rage at the “Big Brother” of American government.
It would be logical to ask anti-government folks to specify exactly how they are being tyrannized, but with a few notable exceptions, the mainstream media avoids challenging or even examining the claims of anti-government protesters - no matter how absurd they are. Are they afraid of being called a “liberal elitist” just for being critical journalists? Or is it just easier to ignore the illiterate signage at anti-government rallies? Why is the press afraid to question the laughable comparisons of President Obama with Hitler and Stalin? Why is the press so impotent to challenge hysterical claims that America is being taken over by socialism?
The ridiculous comparisons we see at anti-government rallies seem almost rational next to the signs carried by birthers, science deniers, death panelists and other extremists who also hate the government. If we’re not careful, next we’ll see signs claiming that the witches have taken over and the earth is really flat. That may sound ridiculous, but the belief that we can have a happy, healthy country without taxes or a central government is no less ridiculous. If the behavior of anti-government folk is any indication, it’s a foolish fantasy that would lead to a dangerous and potentially irreversible chaos.
We can joke about it, but media validation of anti-government fever is not only weak journalism, it is potentially dangerous. Creating an uncritical echo chamber of anti-government slogans can make guys like the suicide pilot feel justified, like a martyred patriot. In this light, we might consider the sobering fact that a litany of anti-American propaganda is one of the ways al-Qaeda motivates its suicide bombers. Do we really want to go down that path? If the comparison seems extreme, consider the fan sites on the web created within hours of the plane attack celebrating the suicide pilot as a patriotic hero – another tactic of al Qaeda.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of anti-government fever is the naïve and dangerous belief that we don’t need a strong national government, we need only have faith in privatization and the neighborly efforts of tax evaders. In denial of the realities of our current economic crisis, devotees of the laissez-faire faith still believe that the “private sector” will come to the rescue and be sufficient to take care of all that the government does now.
Tell that to someone in New Orleans. How different the Katrina disaster would have been if a government program like Americorps had been fully funded and deployed to help with rescue and clean-up. Instead New Orleans got goons from Blackwater and strawberry pop-tart PR from Wal-Mart – what a rescue. The private sector panacea has had decades to prove its superiority but it has yet to do so. For most Americans privatization has been a consistent failure wrapped in a confusion of corporate propaganda.
When Aldous Huxley reflects on the balance of freedom and democracy in Brave New World Revisited, his 1958 collection of nonfiction essays, he reminds us that population explosion and the increasing complexity of the world will necessitate some kind of centralized management if we are to survive in any civilized form. This is a practical matter, not a political one. Anti-government folks want us all to believe that without the “burden” of government, our country would self-organize or be led capably by corporations that have consistently acted with a short-sighted greed and astonishing incompetence.
Look around the world: warring factions, tribes and militias that spring up in the absence of strong central government are a major cause of instability. In our age of suicide bombers and weapons of mass destruction, such ungoverned nations are a serious threat to global security. And if we don’t rigorously reject the ravings of anti-government zealots, a laissez-faire America will only multiply that threat.
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