I have been reading quite a few articles lately in which the individuals (politicians, bureaucrats and just ordinary citizens) are asked about various issues related to the presidential campaigns.  One answer I have heard quite a bit is simply that “the government” should do something.  Sometimes the issues are even cast in terms of a “crisis,” about which someone ought to take action now (or NOW!).  “Pass a law” is another common response.  While I realize that this is a rather general kind of answer, I cannot let it pass without a few comments, especially since political thinkers of the past have commented on such responses in connection with simple majority rule.  A “fun” example is from Frederic Bastiat, the French classical liberal thinker living around 1850.  “The State” was a pamphlet written in 1848.  Bastiat, tongue firmly implanted in cheek, asks for a definition of the state.  Below I have reproduced a few excerpts from it.

“But alas! The unfortunate being [the state], like Figaro, does not know whom to listen to nor which way to turn. The hundred thousand voices of the press and the tribune are all calling out to this being at once:

• Organize work and the workers.
• Root out selfishness.
• Repress the insolence and tyranny of capital.
• Carry out experiments on manure and eggs.
• Criss-cross the country with railways.
• Irrigate the plains.
• Reforest the mountains.
• Set up model farms.
• Set up harmonious workshops.
• Colonize Algeria.
• Provide children with milk.
• Educate the young.
• Succor the elderly.
• Send the inhabitants of towns to the country.
• Bear hard on the profits of all industries.
• Lend money interest free to those who want it.
• Liberate Italy, Poland, and Hungary.
• Breed and improve saddle horses.
• Encourage art and train musicians and dancers for us.
• Prohibit trade and at the same time create a merchant navy.
• Discover truth and toss into our heads a grain of reason. The mission of the state is to enlighten, develop, expand, fortify, spiritualize, and sanctify the souls of peoples.

Notice how much like demands made of the state today are like those in 1848.  There is nothing new under the sun indeed.  State, just do something, we say.  But how does it work?  How did we “get there”?  dare I say it has something to do with human nature?  Read on from Bastiat.

”Oppressors no longer act directly on the oppressed using their own [97] forces. No, our conscience has become too scrupulous for that. There are still tyrants and victims certainly, but between them has placed itself the intermediary that is the state, that is to say, the law itself. What is more calculated to silence our scruples and, perhaps more appealing, to overcome our resistance? For this reason, we all make calls upon the state on one ground or pretext or another. We tell it, “I do not consider that there is a satisfactory relation between the goods I enjoy and my work. I would like to take a little from the property of others to establish the balance I desire. But this is dangerous. Can you not make my task easier? Could you not provide me with a good position? Or else hinder the production of my competitors? Or else make me an interest-free loan of the capital you have taken from its owners? Or raise my children at public expense? Or award me subsidies? Or ensure my well-being when I reach the age of fifty? By these means I will achieve my aim with a perfectly clear conscience, since the law itself will have acted on my behalf and I will achieve all the advantages of plunder without ever having incurred either its risks or opprobrium!”

Bastiat seems to have hit upon our own envy and “lust” as the inner spring that drives us to demand that the state do so  much for us, even when we don’t really know what we want or when we have not considered the best way to achieve that goal when we do know.  An earlier group of philosophers would have called this “the passions.”  The Bible simply labels it as sin.

Regardless, it is unfortunate that we seem to have come to this situation.  No doubt some will argue that we “owe” something to some people who simply cannot help themselves.  And that is true to an extent.  There are people who cannot work or take care of themselves.  But there are many who are quite capable of achieving flourishing and dignity in fulfilling work and life.  That is how God designed us.  We do them no favors by first allowing them to be propagandized by those who tell them they deserve what they can get “free” from others, and then giving them whatever they demand, under the banner of “rights.”

Unfortunately, the damage done is very hard to overcome.  But it is not impossible.  Christians especially need to get a genuinely biblical perspective here—one of true compassion, as opposed to false promises.  Perhaps by God’s grace we can engage in culture in such a way that a real change can be brought about, gradually to be sure, and not without the Gospel as the central theme.