The mythological golden age of "less government".

I've found that the arguments about "less government" (as absurd as I find the argument to be, given the current corporate-laden reality of decision making power should be "less corporate influence" vs "more") to be problematic in at least one fundamental aspect: its romanticism of a time that never existed. Proponents of "getting the government out of my life!", "let me keep more of my money", and getting back to core principles overlook some very important structural and historical realities, namely the large role that the federal government played in constructing the core of some of the right's biggest fantasies about the past and the role that it plays today in allowing businesses to run efficiently.

First, let me discuss the notion that "more government equals less freedom", or that at the least "more government means an impediment on my freedom." There is perhaps no easier way to debunk this simplistic, pat bumper-sticker idea than to look at interstate highways, the product of federal government projects and planning. I'm sure while reading this, there are no shortage of people who depend on the efficiency of interstate highways for travel, work, or other day-to-day activities. It provides a direct and relatively simple mode of transport to take care of daily needs. But what the average observer may take for granted is the plethora of government intervention that makes this efficiency and freedom of speedy long-distance travel possible. It is government law and regulation by the police department that ensures people drive in one specific direction to get to a location, to punish those who would drink alcohol and drive on such a fast moving highway, to exit at certain on and off ramps to get to their next location, to ensure speed limit so that accidents are less frequent, and so on and so forth. Even the fundamental root of the idea, the taxation that makes funding possible, is the result of government intervention. What the simple slogan ignores is that though taxation may be an easy scapegoat of an "imposition", the indirect result of the imposition yields far more liberties to achieve individual tasks.

Now that the basic assumption of this idea of the government involvement that does nothing but impede the liberty of everyday life has been shelved, that government is not simple "a necessary evil" but can rather be a necessary good is shown to be overly simplistic, let us look at the attitudes of the past that govern many of our current day outlooks on how modern day processes should be run.

Most Americans, regardless of ideology, tend to accept (even if latently) the idea that this country was built by rugged individualists, blazing into the Western hills and achieving success through nothing but their own self-reliance and determination. Sorry, but it just ain't so.

I'll leave aside the very simple way to debunk this idea, by invoking the money made off of slaves by individuals and communities, all the while entertaining the notion of and waxing harmoniously over their own self-reliance. Instead of the traditional way I would destroy this assumption, I'll investigate other events. I'm referring to the land purchases of the U.S. government of the West and the military displacement of the indigenous people that were living on the lands. While the latter is undoubtedly an example of an unjust use of government power, it is nonetheless an example that flies in the face of the individualist thinker who likes to decontextualize the past to suit his own needs currently. The government spent $50 million dollars on the purchases of Alaska, California, Texas, and the Louisiana territories. The Homestead and Preemption Acts then turned and sold these lands to the "rugged individualists" for next to nothing in comparison, all in the name of Western progress.

In the 20th century, it was the government that would aid primarily in establishing industry to set up the life that makes up the base of our lifestyle today, building and maintaining dams and irrigation projects, rural electrification projects brought to rural farmers during the Great Depression, and wired the country-side for "progress" as it built interstate highways to facilitate travel and commerce. Some 183 acres were given to railroad companies, those which facilitated the growth of logging companies that would prove invaluable to economic growth.

Indeed, the West has a long and detailed history of government dependence. Funnily enough, however, the United States has an unusual paradoxical history of anti-government sentiment, cocksure at every corner that the existence and maintenance of government projects and involvement in the lives of citizens is tantamount to destruction of the ability to pursure personal liberty and economic freedom. It is a history of misplaced rage, or a non-contextualized understanding of oneself as an individual and as a people in this nation.

It would seem that in the course of American history, and especially in the recent case of Tea Party rage, that government assistance, no matter how large or necessary for the growth and expansion of individual liberties, also breeds an ungrateful attitude towards those same exploits.