Spring is here and all the plant pods are open. That means my
sinuses are closed. Therefore, because I'm feeling a bit loopy, my brain being starved for oxygen, thus putting me on par with your typical elected official, I decided it would be a grand time to lay out what I believe are the critical, necessary characteristics of any good government. This is an easy starter into the
bedrock values that underpin my suggestions for the future of the nation.
First, any government should be effective. While it should be obvious that we as a people would want any organization formed for our benefit to be able to efficiently and functionally accomplish its chartered mission, recent history in particular has shown that this is not obvious (see any federal department/bureau/agency, excluding the military).
Second, any government must be simple. By this I mean easily accessible to the average person. Laws, statutes, and regulations should be written as plainly as possible so that every literate individual can be engaged with his or her government and understand what their representatives and agents are doing. A great example would be the federal tax code. Presently, the tax code is 80,000+ pages long. Armies of lawyers and accountants are currently employed to both write and decipher it, which inevitably leads to numerous different interpretations and loopholes. (Also leads to tax "oversights" by supposedly intelligent and informed people like House Ways and Means Chairman
Charlie Rangel and
Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner. Those would be the guys responsible for respectively writing and overseeing enforcement of the tax code.
Ooops!) A simple tax code would be 1 or 2 pages, consisting of such "complex" language as "multiple your income by 0.15. That is your tax responsibility."
Third, good government must be transparent. Transparency dictates that everything the government does, aside from what is related to national security, is open to inspection by the public. It also requires a simple and effective (see above) process for accessing government records, publications, and proceedings. Again, transparency enables the average citizen to remain engaged and knowledgeable about what the government is doing. It can also work to keep politicians and bureaucrats honest (I know,
oxymoron.) because everything they do is open to the light of day. Except for the Pentagon, every government office should be a metaphorical clear glass building.
Fourth, good government should be small and limited in powers and scope. This could be two criteria, but I'll treat them as one since they are so closely related. If you consider it for a moment, you will see that small and limited are absolutely necessary qualities if government is to be effective, simple, and transparent. Really, it's intuitive - the larger and more complex something becomes, the less efficient, simple, and easily understood that thing becomes. Does anyone who has every been on the phone with tech support think
Windows is simple and effective?
Furthermore, I firmly and absolutely believe that you know best for your own life and have the right to the opportunity and power to make those decisions for yourself. Put another way, the closer to you the power is, the more likely that you will achieve the outcome you want. Conversely, the further away from you the power resides, the less likely that decisions will be made that best represent your wants and needs. In practice, your local and state governments should retains as much power as possible while the federal government looks after several critical functions. But at all levels of government, power needs to be clearly deliniated and as as limited as possible. Small and limited government keeps people who don't know you, or answer to you, from making important decisions for you. It also contrainsts ambition, corruption, and greed; and, when government is also simple and transparent, you will readily perceive when those in power are misusing their position. Then you can take action against the transgressors.
Now, some would argue that you cannot have an effective government if it is simple and small. I reject these claims. Such arguments presume that the government knows better than individual citizens and should thus have a wider, deeper role in the affairs of the country. They also assume that the government can do many things better. Beyond several key functions, such as national defense and a justice system, this is laughable and demonstrably false. Think of your own life. Don't you achieve more and get more done when tasks are well defined and you have a simple method to do it? Of course you do! That applies to any organization, including government. The less they have to do, and better defined those tasks are, the more effectively, quickly, and inexpensively can they do it. And, the better you can judge success or misuse of power.
Hopefully, it is clear to you, dear reader, that these 4 characteristics of good government were all instituted at the time of the founding and ratification of the Constitution. These are not radical changes for our nation; quite the opposite. They all exist to one degree or another still. Rather they are a framework for evaluating how well our government is representing us and how healthy our republic is. Unfortunately, our national problems today can be traced to a steady creep away from effective, simple, transparent, and small and limited government. Especially at the federal level. We The People must demand from our government a steady return to strict adherence to these qualities.
