The Democrats might or might not be the Godless party. After their un-parliamentary behavior, no one can know. But they are the party of government. They said so, for the first time that anyone now living can remember. That makes them more dangerous than ever to the liberty that the people enjoy.

Democrats brag about government

The Democrats openly bragged about embracing government in a video that played on Tuesday at their convention. Someone uploaded seventeen seconds of footage from C-SPAN. That’s as much of the video that the public can get. So if the Democrats want to complain about context dropping, they can blame themselves alone.

We are committed to all people. We do believe you can use government in a good way. Government is the only thing that we all belong to. We all have different churches, different clubs. But we’re all together as a part of our city, or our county, or our State, and our nation.

Naturally, the Republicans hear that, and say something like:

There! You see! Democrats tell you we all belong to government! Wrong! Government belongs to us, not we to it!

A week earlier, Clint Eastwood said something almost like answering this video before it came out:

We own America!

By “we” he meant the people.

John Hayward at Human Events noted the bad timing of the release. On that same day, the total US public debt ran over $16 trillion.

What’s wrong with what the Democrats said?

General George Washington resigns his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. Portrait: John Trumbull.

The Democrats have to admit that they laid themselves wide-open to the obvious charge. That is: the government, according to them, owns us all. By itself, the seventeen-second line doesn’t quite say that. But with this line by Barack Obama:

Someone built roads and bridges! If you own a business, that…you didn’t build that! Somebody else made that happen!

the effect is just what Republicans say it is. And Democrats know it.

The narrator of that segment probably meant something different, but not different enough. He describes government as a social club. According to him, we identify with government. Furthermore, governments at different levels become part of each person’s identity.

But government is not a social club. Government manages force so that people over whom it holds sway can get along without force or violence.

And government should not be a public charity. How charitable can any citizen or subject feel, when the government takes from him, for the unearned, unpaid benefit of other subjects?

Nor is government an incubator of invention. At best, you get disastrous results like the near-loss of the crew of Apollo XIII, or the total losses of the crews of Shuttles Challenger and Columbia. At worst you get “weapons of coercion and destruction,” to quote Ayn Rand.

George Washington said it best:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

A thought to remember in the next sixty days.

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