Trump is in an outstanding negotiating position, but he is also surrounded by cowards and Quislings. It must be tiring sorting out the bullshit from the good, but I really hope he uses this opportunity for a massive down-sizing. It would be beautiful.
Speaking for myself, this “shut-down” has not affected my life in any way. If it continues for years, perhaps I might eventually be inconvenienced. but perhaps not.
We need to break up the TSA, and return that function to the States, as structured by Federal security guidelines. We need to return the National Parks to the States. And if there is something else vital being lost by furloughed Fed’s, I am not seeing it. I like this new status quo. I hope it does last. No one is safe when the Feds are well fed, feeling safe, and empowered to ruin lives.
Government is a necessary evil. Never forget that. Yes, it is necessary. But it also turns evil quickly and always if it is not kept on a short, short leash.
I posted Bastiat’s exemplary treatment of this topic. Here is another really good one: https://fee.org/articles/maxwell-anderson-and-the-guaranteed-life-two-forgotten-american-treasures/
Now he [the socialist “reformer”] is right in believing that the accumulation of too much wealth and power in a few hands is a danger to his civilization and his liberty. But when the weapon he finds is economic planning, and when the law he enacts sets up bureaus to run the nation’s business, he is fighting a lesser evil by accepting a greater and more deadly one, and he should be aware of that fact.
A government is always “organized to sell protection to the inhabitants of a limited area at monopolistic prices.” The members of a government are not only in business, but in a business which is in continual danger of lapsing into pure gangsterism, pure terrorism, and plundering, buttered over at the top by a hypocritical pretense at patriotic unselfishness. The continent of Europe has seen too many such governments lately, and our own government is rapidly assuming economic and social responsibilities which take us in the same direction.
Whatever the motives behind a government-dominated economy, it can have but one result—a loss of individual liberty in thought, speech, and action.