When I see the cacophony of protestations and indignations hurled at those poor golden boys at AIG, I am reminded of the words imparted to me by one of my wiser attendings. Advised of a ruinous result suffered by a patient on a fellow professor’s service and the subsequent recriminations offered up by that physician, my attending made an insightful observation. He remarked that some held the position that when something went wrong, quickly move to determine who was at fault – and make certain everyone knows it wasn’t you!

            Thus we are witness to a great opera unfolding along the banks of the Potomac. The government, having spent twenty years encouraging people to take out loans they could ill afford and coercing banks to give out said loans when they knew better, now seeks to cast blame for the natural result in every direction - except toward itself.

            The title of the favorite aria of this piece seems to be “The Greed of Everyone” – that is of everyone who is not in government. The lyrics detail the crimes of bankers, stockbrokers, and all the usual capitalist suspects. The plot jumps around a good bit, keeping the audience dizzy, but it finally comes to the final act where the heroic savior – the bureaucrat -  steps in and puts to sword the evil doers and sets all aright in the kingdom.

            The Broadway version was entitled “The Merchant of Menace”. Though encumbered with the same vacuous plot, it had the advantage of not being so loud.

            The point of all this noise is that if our hero blames everyone else long enough and loud enough, people become disenchanted with the whole spectacle. They quickly lose interest, pull out their programs, and start reading the advertisements. At that point, no one notices when our hero runs back stage to rob the ticket booth. Our hero then returns, wearing a Brooks Brother suit, and rides through the audience in a gold plated topless hybrid, tossing money to the overjoyed mob.

Why do we have government? This is a fundamental question that must be answered by the citizens of a nation before these same citizens can decide what sort of government they want. It is a question our founding fathers wrestled with over two hundred years ago. They had at their hands two thousand years of human experience upon which to make their decision.

By European standards, they represented a fairly diverse group, and that diversity was frankly a weakness by those same standards. In the end, they took the best ideas and went their own way. The “way” they chose took this nation onto a path that led it away from European norms for over a century. 

What they had seen was a history of nearly constant turmoil, where nations warred with their neighbors while simultaneously suffering civil wars. Nations rose and fell at the often fickle whims of their leaders whose only mandate was the sword. Even the much lauded democracies of the ancient world were prone to such chaos, often more so, because they fell prey to the wiles of the demagogue who could stir up a mob and have it at his pleasure.

With these models to choose from, the founders chose their own new way. Government would serve the citizen, not the other way around. This was a novel idea. Though Kings and emperors and senators had in the past spoke of serving the good of the people, this clearly never seemed to translate into serving the people.

Why do we have government? Because there are certain facets of any civil nation that simply cannot be entrusted into the hands of private individuals who are not servants of the people. This is not to say that these facets are too important to be in the hands of private individuals. It is to say that there are certain authorities prone to misuse.

Authority over the military and law enforcement and over taxation to fund such institutions are the principle areas that simply cannot be left in the hands of the private world. To do so would be to tempt dictatorship.

Understand public authority over and management of these authorities is not necessarily the most efficient way to operate them. After all, some of the most efficient and successful armies in history were in fact private armies. To say Napoleon’s army belonged to the people of France is to ignore the inconvenient fact he tended to do with it as he wished without their consent. So too Caesar and Alexander.  

No, we have public authority over the military to avoid a Caesar. In this way, we allow no possibility of a Rubicon that can be crossed.

Key here is to understand the importance of the institution in question is not the trait that makes it necessary to keep it in the public sector. Food production and distribution are the most important segments of any civilization, but history shows that when these facets are in the hands of the government, they are inefficient and invariably lead to shortages and often starvation. One of the great successes of our nation has been to keep food production largely out of the hands of government, thus providing us with this commodity in excess.

In fact, most of the areas of our own civilization where we suffer from a “lack of resources” are those where the government has the heaviest hand. The medical field is a prime example – the one I am the most familiar with. The government stymies innovation and efficiency at every turn, thus making the delivery of medical care much more sluggish and expensive than need be.

.   In short, government in a Republic serves the role of servant, occupying those regions most prone to abuse of power – military, law enforcement, the judiciary, etc. Government should not intrude into important segments, such as food production, housing, medical care, and the financial systems, except where legal disputes arise. There, a nonparticipating government can ‘serve’ as impartial judge. To do otherwise is to introduce the inherent inefficiencies of bureaucracy into areas simply too important for such nonsense.