I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Do you know why governments form? Because humans are social creatures.
None of us, even the most reserved, lives totally alone.
As social creatures, we gather in communities – each doing what we can. There are community needs, however, that no one individual can provide. These days, those items include roads, schools, internet, water service, garbage collection, law enforcement, firefighting, and so on. So, the community puts together a leadership structure that manages the creation and maintenance of those services. How does the government pay for said creation and maintenance? Taxes. To be a member of and benefit from the community, every individual must contribute to the community fund.
What We’ve Got
Different communities have chosen different leadership structures such as chiefs, kings, dictators, and varying degrees of democracy. Each system has its pros and cons. The United States has a Constitutional Republic. That means there is a constitution that sets the rules, and we elect officials to represent groups of individuals to take care of our group needs by following those rules. Some of the rules in our constitution are separation of powers, freedom of speech, birthright citizenship, and not being allowed to drink alcoholic beverages until the age of 21.
Another thing our constitution sets out is how to change rules and make new ones. This is intentionally a difficult process so that all the people represented by these rules have a say in how they are updated. If it were easy, more than 27 rule adaptations would have happened since the country’s creation almost 250 years ago.
No matter what you think of this system, or any other one out there, the purpose of government is to see to the needs of the group.
The problem is that theory and reality are frequently different. As populations grow, the needs change and vary. Government, in any form, tends to be slow to respond to change. And that’s because individuals tend to be slow to respond to change. Remember, government is simply a subgroup of the community which is just a bunch of individuals.
The U.S. is at a point where the needs of the group, the individuals in the leadership structure, and the rules of our constitution are not in agreement. Unfortunately, rather than stepping back and looking at what the problems really are and how to best resolve them for the good of the group, members of our leadership structure are trying to throw out the rules. All the rules, specifically that first one: separation of powers.
I get it, any form of democracy is hard. It requires participation from the members of the community. And that runs us into two more basic traits of the human creature: laziness and greed. If the system works well enough for me, why should I put effort into it? And if the system is working exceptionally well for me, I’m going to put effort into keeping it from changing.
And yet, the purpose of government is to see to the needs of the group. Every individual, not just a subset.
What to Do About It
This is where I could go off on some rant about “If I were Queen.” But I’m not Queen, nor do I want to be. I have thoughts, opinions, and ideas that I’m willing to share; yet I think we need something bigger.
I think we need a group time-out.
“We the people” are so wound up by who said or did what, that we’ve lost sight of the basics. About the only thing uniting the United States is that we are all still living here. So, what can we all agree on? Personally, I believe that a working water and sewer system is a basic everyone can agree on. (I want drinkable water to come from the tap and when I flush my toilet I want the waste taken away and dealt with.)
Can we all agree that the city dwellers need the food produced by farmers and that farmers need the city dwellers to buy their crops? (Sorry folks, food does not just appear in the grocery store, there are farms and farmers involved.)
How about a communication system that works nationally? Land line telephones are becoming less relevant by the minute; however cellular and internet systems have yet to reach every corner of the country.
OK, something a little more advanced. Can we agree that air travel is here to stay? Can we agree that planes flying into each other is a bad thing? So, the group needs someone to make sure that airplanes are not running into each other. The US government has an agency for that called the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). That is an agency that most people do not think about because it works – until recently.
There is a slew of government agencies that just work, so we don’t think about them. That’s a good thing.
Unfortunately, more and more of those agencies are making the news. Just because we didn’t know they existed, doesn’t mean they’re not important. Is there waste in government? Sure. That doesn’t mean that everything needs to go. In fact, it can mean that some groups need to get bigger. Personally, I would rather have the government taking care of a group need I hadn’t thought of with an agency I’ve never heard of than to deal with the drastic results of having those agencies suddenly erased.
There are already departments in place to look for fraud, corruption, and waste. What the current leadership doesn’t seem to like is that they look at EVERYONE in government, not just the opposing party.
As a group that has chosen democracy, we need the government machine to be apolitical so that the parts of government that we’ve already agreed upon continue to work. If the group – in the form of the elected leadership structure does not like what’s already agreed upon, there is a defined process to change those things. This is called taking care of the group – the sole purpose of government.
When the Group is Big
The United States is a huge country with hundreds of millions of people. That’s a lot of needs to look after. Especially when not everyone needs the same things.
For example, while we do not all agree as to how, Californians do tend to agree that water is a resource worth conserving. California is a drought state after all. Louisiana, however, does not look at water the same way – they tend to have a surplus. This is why there are separate governments at the state level. It is also why we have different representatives in the federal government to make sure our specific needs are addressed.
Part of why the U.S. is so big is that members of the smaller groups saw the value in being under the umbrella of the federal leadership structure. Every state has a somewhat proportional amount of representation, and the federal government looks at those needs shared by all, such as disaster relief, national security, infrastructure that crosses state lines, and keeping airplanes from running into each other.
My Call to Action
Love the country.
This is not as easy as it sounds. Like I said, democracy is hard. There is good news though.
Liking each other and agreeing on everything is unnecessary. Agreeing upon the rules already in place, including the rules of how to change the rules, would be a solid start.
What made us so great is that we are a huge group of people that chose to live within the rules of our constitution and built something amazing despite (or because of) our differences.
So truly love this country, all of it.
