Dismantling a "positive activist government" is a bad thing? - Granite Grok

Dismantling a “positive activist government” is a bad thing?

Translation: what Katrina vanden Heuval, editor and publisher of the Far Left “The Nation” calls “a positive activist Government” I call a Progressive’s wet dream.  What she, as truly a fine example of a far Leftist, wants is a Government that is invested in every aspect of our lives and has no problem with that Government taking private property from some to give to others, believing that the Marxist ideal of “social justice” is actually written in our Constitution (a la “separation .

Who the heck am I trying to kid – these folks HATE the “negativist” (which tells government what it canNOT do, to limit government to preserve Liberty) Constitution – that scrap of paper that, according to them, should have been sent to the toilet paper factory centuries ago.  And yes, I mean that, given how a multitude of data dots are all self-connecting themselves this past week from decades of Progressivism and the Reign of Comrade Obama these last few years.  How else can you explain the verbiage from their mouths and the actions of their works?  At least vanden Heuvel is honest about it – talks AND walks the talk (easier when one is rich and “got mine” is pervasive).

From This Week with George Stephanopolous:

Ron Fournier (National Journal) – People are looking, outside of government, for their own workarounds around the Federal Government.  Millenials have a high level of civic engagement but polls show that they do not trust government.  What this means is that people like that, the next generation, are staying out of Government. That’s not a good thing.

George Will: Big Government (back at him), the best construction of the IRS, the scandal is that Big Government is impossible to monitor.  That’s the lesson of this!

Ron Fournier (National Journal) – But any government has to be trusted. These scandals are only ….

George Will: Every government has to be trusted but bigger the Government gets the bigger the distrust ought to be and will be.

Katrina vanden Heuval: But I have never understood why people that hate government go into government because we are seeing an intent to dismantle a positive activist government.  There are Millenials around this country who still see as they face  student debt and other factors, a need for a positive government that would improve the conditions of peoples’ lives.

I can tell you, Katrina!

Fournier brings up the idea, seeming amazed that young adults would even be doing this, that there are a lot of folks whose first reaction to a personal need is not to go looking to Government for an answer or a solution.  He laments that these folks seemingly don’t have, at the least, a need for government and at the worst, don’t like government at all.  His inside-the-Beltway Statistism shows – what is wrong???

My take is that this is normal – and he slips up by pointing out their “high level of civic engagement” – a perfect answer.  The Founders NEVER want Government to be the be all and end all.  Instead, all of the “hip and cool” stuff was to be accomplished within Civil Society – distinct and separate from Government.  They expected that individuals and Society would come up with the solutions needed for the day’s problem – and once solved, disband and go on to the next thing: ordered chaos.

George Will is right – the Federal Government has become too large, too intrusive, and as we have been seeing the last few days – too abusive because it can.  When the news starts to spread out from we news junkies to the regular folks, how the Obama Administration has “fundamentally transformed” the use of Government from being one that serves the people to one that is becoming, and clearly, serving the governmental elite.  Stuff it full of like minded people (public sector unions and Democrats already predisposed to a progressive/socialist ideology, and you end up with a government all too willing to view the ordinary citizen to be secondary.

And the rest of us will more and more distrust it as it treats us worse and worse: silencing ordinary citizens via the IRS simply because they dissent, silencing the press via for digging into dusky corners?  And this is just the start – it will get worse over the next 3 and 3/4 years.

And while vanden Heuval may be honest, I know why people will get into government that hate the idea of a “a positive activist Government” – it is simple.   It is Liberty, and the love of it and for it.  They realize that as Government becomes more and more activist, it also becomes more and more controlling.  Heuval only has rose-colored glasses – like most Progressives, they believe government can ONLY be good – regardless of what actually happens (like the revelations from this past week).  Fournier has it right – the Millenials (as he said, the la creme de la creme) are realizing that Government cannot give them enough to be happy their happiness and their well being depends on one thingthemselves.  Sure, a present can be nice, but a present given by Government means a taking from someone else.    Joy and accomplishment comes from within – and not something that is just given to you.

vanden Heuval has the typical Progressive outlook: Government must be “freed” from the bounds set up on by the Constitution in order to tend to its children, for they cannot do it for themselves.  No, they may not use the word “children”, but that is the attitude that is expressed.

Although much older, she shows that she is less wise than these young Millenials – it is in Civil Society, the “high level of civic engagement”, where people can be their best and help others to be their best – and not by a constant handout given by an ever suffocating bureaucracy.

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