The Danger of Expanding Bureaucracies

Enough!

Stopping the uncontrolled expansion of the U.S. government has got to be the most important task facing conservatives today. The great danger in expanding the government is that doing so creates more bureaucrats. Once you create new bureaucrats, it becomes almost impossible to rid the place of them.

It is axiomatic that once you reach a critical mass of bureaucrats, the government ossifies and change back toward smaller government becomes virtually impossible. In fact, every attempt to reduce the number of bureaucrats only seems to increase their numbers. Nigel Hawthorne made a particularly enlightening comment about this phenomenon in his role as civil servant extraordinaire, Sir Humphrey Appleby on the BBC series “Yes Minister”. Here's the exchange with his boss the elected MP.

Jim Hacker, MP: Twenty three thousand! In the Department for Administrative Affairs? Twenty three thousand people just for administering other administrators. We have to do a Times-Motion study, see who we can get rid of.

Sir Humphrey: We did one of those last year.

Jim: And?

Sir Humphrey: It transpired that we needed another five hundred people.

Civil Servants exist to insure that nothing ever changes. They live in cubicles. They work seven days a week pushing papers around in an effort to basically avoid doing anything new or different. Change is meaningless to bureaucrats. It is anathema. Change means more work, something no bureaucrat welcomes.

Sir Humphrey on getting things done in civil service: "The Foreign Office aren’t there to do things. They’re there to explain why things can’t be done.”

Bureaucratic immobility is why every revolution in South America ends up replacing one corrupt government with a virtually identical one. They merely change the leadership. The civil service remains intact and in place. You can’t get rid of them. Bureaucracies are so hardwired into the fabric of a country that, if they were to suddenly disappear, we wouldn’t know what to do next.

Just look how much of our time is wasted appeasing bureaucrats. There’s standing in line at the post office, the DMV, preparing IRS forms, sales tax forms, forms your bank makes you fill out because some bureaucrat somewhere tells them you have to. In my years on the TxDOT Public Transportation Advisory Committee, I discovered that much of the paperwork, regulation and headache of getting transportation systems into place is not because someone passed a law, but because some bureaucrat in a tiny office somewhere decided they wanted some paperwork from you in order to justify their existence. And, because they have their ink-stained fingers firmly round your funding or approval for your project, you tamely submit.

I remember trying to find out why we were prohibited from solving transit problems with innovative, out of the box ideas. I was inevitably told we couldn't do that.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it is policy that we can't do it that way?"

"Well, how do we change the policy? Do I need to talk to my representative and senator?"

"That won't help."

"Why?"

"Because it's a policy, not a law."

"And who came up with that policy?"

"I'm not sure."

"Then, who do I talk to about getting that policy changed?"

"I don't know?"

"What if I talked to the Director?"

"You can't do that!"

"Why?"

"It's against policy!"

This seemed entirely logical to this person. I attempted to go around the system and actually had some success in getting some policies changed. It was soon being whispered about that I was anti-transit and I only lasted one term. A local bureaucrat wrote me a letter in which he said it served me right for being arrogant!

A few years back when the state reduced the bureaucracy for human service related programs from 22 agencies to 5 there was a hew and cry about the land. They organized a series of local anti-change forums trying to stop the consolidation of departments and programs. Their arguments was that it couldn't be done without hurting poor and needy people.

I went to one of the anti-change meetings and listened. After a while I smelled a rat.

I stood up. "If we reduce the bureaucracies, won't there be more money for people in the programs?"

Speaker: "But the social workers will be overloaded and won't be able to process them all, so many people will not be served."

"What if we reduce the paperwork needed to process them."

Speaker: "Then we won't know if they are really eligible."

"Wouldn't it be better to miss a few welfare moochers and serve more people than to spend all our money on people sitting in offices pushing papers around?"

He paled a little and made a face like a fish trying to breathe out of water.

Then, I asked the speaker who he worked for.

Speaker: "I represent Citizens for Social Justice, a coalition of agencies....."

“No, I mean, who do you actually work for? Who gives you a paycheck?”

Speaker: "Uh, my, uh, regular job is with the Federal and State Employees Union."

"I see...."

That’s what I had guessed. The reason we have to stop this expansion of government is that once it happens, we’ll never be able to get rid of all the bureaucrats. Then, if we get all those new bureaucrats, they’ll make us waste even more time waiting in lines and filling out forms instead of doing our jobs.

I’m about ready to sell everything, buy myself a schooner and become a tramp trader in the islandes. The problem is, I could probably never get all the paperwork done to even get my boat out of port. I’d run off to the mountains, but I probably need a permit. Last time we had a church picnic, we had to reserve the lakeside campground 3 months in advance and leave a large deposit and fill out an environmental impact statement, insurance release, show proof of liability and proof of financial responsibility. I’m probably exaggerating, but not by much.

The only thing they didn’t ask for was proof of citizenship. That one I might have understood…

Tom King
Flint, TX

P.S. Also you might be interested in one more gem from Sir Humphrey on health care strategy in Britain:

“Yes, but we’ve been into that. It has been shown that if those extra one hundred thousand people had lived to a ripe old age that they would have cost us even more in pensions and social security, than they did in medical treatment. So financially speaking it is unquestionably better that they continue to die at the present rate.”

Climate of Fear: The War for America's Shy People

The rhetoric in this countryhas become ridiculous - on both sides! Saying this will not get me a large audience as a blogger. Many conservatives have decided that telling lies is okay as long as your intent is good. The hard left has been doing so for years. Wild stories and inflammatory language is one way to have a popular blog, though.

Me, I'm congenitally unable to do some of the things you have to do to be a successful blogger - among those, tell "good" stories if I know them to be untrue. I'm not very good at writing to be search engine optimized. It seems dishonest to write so that you repeat key words that are popular search words on Google, Yahoo, Bing and the rest. Technically, I should find a way to mention, for instance, Ted Kennedy, Mary Jo Kopechne, Chappaquiddick, Robert Novak, Michael Jackson or Rebecca Gayheart and Eric Dane (some sort of romantick entanglement I believe). All these are high on the most often searched list of keywords this week. Unfortunately, four years of Mrs. Creel's English classes taught me the evils of artificial writing and I cannot do it and feel good about myself, no matter if it would help me get one million "hits".

If I wanted to rile up some conservative readers and win their allegiance, I should mention Van Jones, Glenn Beck or Town Hall. I do, if I have something to say about those things, but writing an article where I repeat those names simply to get the search engine to move me up in a word search seems as disingenuous as Michael Savage calling himself by his full name instead of using pronouns like "I" or "me". Makes me want to smack him!

According to master blogger, Robert Stacy McCain, some other tricks include finding ways to insert popular women in not much clothing into your blog, picking fights so that you gain lots of enemies and spending a LOT of time self-promoting.

Ah, well, I guess I didn't really want to be a wildly successful blogger anyway. I think I'd rather write honestly. I sleep better at night that way.

Now that I've wandered off topic, let me get back to it. I read a piece in which a liberal someone had gone to a town hall and waved around a map with Iraq on it. He found (surprise, surprise) that 75% of those who opposed Obama's health care initiative were:

1. Unable to find Iraq on a map though it was brightly colored and in the center of the map.

2. All stupid white people who only memorized anti-health care junk that Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity had sent them by e-mail or were paid by some mega-insurance companies that had paid them to spread lies about Obamacare.

3. All were probably either on Medicare or Veteran's Care and were hypocrites anyway.

Again I am shocked.

Okay, that was sarcasm. I admit it. It's just that once again, we're getting the same old Democrat tactic. I remember it from high school where it was a popular way to keep the cool kids in power. No matter what happens, if you don't believe and act the way the popular kids did, you were labeled stupid and ignorant even if you have a 139 IQ, a 4.0 GPA and actually knew what you are talking about.

It's the rhetorical equivalent of the masterful comeback, "Oh, yeah!" The Democrats are masters of it.

They'er using it to marginalize the frighteningly large numbers of angry mainstream Americans who are showing up for Health Care Town Hall meetings this summer. The target to be intimidated and "guided" into correct liberal thinking by this particular anti-free speech campaign, however, is not the mythical moderates. It's not conservatives. It's not even the liberal base that supports the health care takeover. This tactic is aimed at people who, by nature, don't want to make a fuss. They don't want to get into a screaming match. They don't want anybody to be mad at them and they do not want to be thought of as "different". This is the group that is truly the swing vote in US elections. They are the go-alongs. It takes a lot to move them and fear that something bad will happen that will upset their world is one of the biggest things that motivates them to action. It takes a lot to get these guys out to a town hall meeting. It is not in their nature to go against anything, much less their duly elected congressman or woman. They don't really understand all the ramifications of political stuff like this because it really doesn't concern them. Only when something threatens the health, comfort and safety of their families. Why else do you think the message is, "Don't worry. Health Care Reform won't hurt you. It will make everything good for all Americans. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain....."

If you go to a town hall, watch how these plain simple folk react when they get really angry at their congressman. Watch them shake their heads as they speak. It's as though they are saying "No, no, no, no, no..." all the time they are confronting this powerful person that they may actually have voted for because they were comfortable with him. They don't want to be there. They don't want to confront this person. They look over at the union guys and the liberal plants sent there to intimidate them and they just flat want to go home and hide. Even their body language says "I don't like doing this."

The problem is that even if they agree with someone, if that person or group resorts to the tactics of shouting, fear and intimidation, they drive those same people away. It's a careful dance between just enough intimidation and too much. Joe McCarthy failed to understand that back in the early 50's. He was right about Communists infiltrating Hollywood. It really was happening. Americans were frightened by it. But when he resorted to Gestapo like tactics, he lost America's shy people. There was a point in the McCarthy hearings where the country gave a collective cringe and turned off their radios. After that, no one cared how much of what he said was true. They weren't listening anymore.

At first, Washington, the Adams boys, Jefferson and Patrick Henry were considered rabble rousers and the American colonists by and large really didn't want to hear them. Mel Gibson captured the sentiment in his character's reaction to the revolution in "The Patriot". He just wanted to take care of his kids and his farm. He wasn't looking to confront power. He knew what the cost would be and he shrank from paying that cost.

I don't blame him. I don't blame any of the grandmas and grandpas that have driven to the town halls in their pickups and big grandma Buicks. It happened during the Revolution. Britain got cocky and pushed their grab for power too far too fast. They made the silent majority, the shy people of America fear for their way of life.

That's what's happening in the first months of the Obama administration. They chose the quick grab for power over the slow, steady approach. The Cap and Trade and Health Care Initiatives are the equivalent of a "Hail Mary" pass in football. I think they've decided that this is the last chance for socialism and if they risk it all on this one roll of the dice, they can win!

Bloggers, talk show hosts and conservative action groups are fighting a delaying action, hoping Americans will wake up to what's happeing before it's too late. We need to block that Hail Mary pass or time may actually run out on us. We'll be left with a frightening new system of government with the power to destroy all opposition in its way.

Delay and Sound the Alarm!

We need night riders like Paul Revere to wake up the country to its peril. We also need the informants that found out the British were coming and where they were going to. Soon we'll need the patriots at the bridge standing toe to toe with a foe that is disciplined, well-armed and confident. But on that day, which side will America's shy people be standing behind? That's the critical factor in whether we win or lose in this fight for freedom.

I think I can tell you which side they'll take. It'll be the side that best convinces them it can protect their way of life - the things they most value. The side that best articulates its case without malice or brutality (or at least without the appearance of malice and cruelty) will carry the field. As Ghandi and Martin Luther King, the original Martin Luther and Jesus Christ himself demonstrated, it may require some of us to have nerves of steel - the ability to hold our fire till we see the whites of their eyes. We may have to risk our lives and our honor, our wealth and our safety. Some of us may be ruined in the effort. Some may not survive. The way to win may well be for enough of us to go down with dignity and reveal the foe as a cruel tyrant by his behavior. We may lose talk radio, conservative news, religious broadcasting and independent publications before it's over. We may lose a lot of things we value before America fully wakes.

I hope not.

In this current, and what I believe may be final, conflict, we must tell the truth, no matter what. We must not pass along lies and rumors just because it works to make people believe like we do. Our opponents do that very well. They lie themselves and then convict us in the press of lies we never told. They make up things to support their agenda, no matter whether they are the truth or not. We must not do that too! We must not resort to the tactics of Goebbels, Stalin, Mussolini Saddam Hussein and their ilk simply because lying is an effective tool to get what you want.

Let us be careful in this conflict to tell the truth. I'm listening to both sides and there are many out there who believe that what our government is trying to do is wrong. Many tell the truth scrupulously no matter what their critics say to the contrary. Others say exciting things that will get them ratings without any concern for whether the things they say are true or not. If it sounds good, they'll use it. I get a dozen e-mails a day from people I care very much for with stories in them that are lies. They are great stories and may make me mad at people I should be mad at. Nonetheless they are lies and we hurt ourselves by telling them.

It is harder for a righteous man to fight a war. There are weapons we may not use; tactics in which we may not engage. The clerk at my local grocery store believes that Jesus's coming is imminent. That may well be the answer to the prayer that many freedom-loving Americans have been praying lately.

God help us!

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