We need to break the hold of the idea that states and their governments are there to provide humanitarian assistance. Here at home, this idea is expressed in much of what big government does in its social programs. Government aid after hurricanes and natural disasters has become routine. Extended into foreign affairs, this idea leads to both foreign aid and foreign wars, when the wars are viewed as assisting an oppressed population to throw off tyranny and become free.
Most of big government that makes it big and not limited traces back to an idea that such activities are moral. This idea draws from sources like the Good Samaritan parable and general Christian brotherhood. Because America has Christian roots, the idea is firmly embedded that the government should do right by engaging in humanitarian endeavors of all sorts.
Unfortunately, the idea is wrong that humanitarianism should be effected through the collective powers of a coercive government. It is wrong even in the Gospels. It is a mistake of religious interpretation or of religion to conclude that government humanitarianism is or can be moral. It is a further gigantic mistake to think that it is even an effective approach to rendering assistance. Morally and pragmatically, big government humanitarianism is wrong.
The Good Samaritan story is about personal assistance, not aid made possible by taxation. One cannot ignore that Jesus refused the kingdoms of the world. One cannot ignore that Jesus distinguished God from Caesar.
In the most far-reaching libertarian approach, government is illegitimate because taxes are coerced. One cannot justify or regard government as a morally upright charity that helps out people in need or invades a country with the aim of removing its shackles of tyranny. The same conclusion holds for the minarchist view of limited government.
For a good portion of American history, at least some of those who were in government and ran it regarded big government humanitarianism as unlawful. Others favored such aid. John Calhoun sponsored a bill funding “internal improvements”, what we now call infrastructure. This is a form of domestic aid. James Madison vetoed it. He wrote
“‘The power to regulate commerce among the several States’ can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such a commerce without a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
“To refer the power in question to the clause ‘to provide for the common defense and general welfare’ would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms ‘common defense and general welfare’ embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust.”
These clauses are no longer barriers to big government. They are accepted as supporting big government. The U.S. Constitution has not only been subverted, it has been inverted. Nowadays, constitutionality is no barrier at all to big government and its humanitarian justification because new constitutions and rights declarations legalize them. Socialism is enforced at the point of a legal government gun.
It is best to be openly blunt in rejecting government humanitarianism as wrong in and of itself. One will be accused of being heartless and cruel. Good. The accusation stimulates counterarguments.
When confronted with the overwhelming evidence that government interventions not only are morally wrong but go wrong in practice, their advocates invariably fall back to the position that they weren’t done right or that they only need some tinkering or adjustments to accomplish their aims. It is, however, impossible to fix a system that has an inbuilt and fundamental flaw in its incentives.
Government taxation by force provides the taxing powers with resources to disburse as they see fit, within limits so broad and ill-defined, that they can pursue almost any aims that do not result in revolutions against them. Consequently, they have extraordinarily weak incentives to act as a fiduciary or a trustee might be required to act. Irresponsibility is the result. When Democrats and Republicans debate how to spend the funds at their disposal, the result is often a detail, because neither side is motivated to act as a trustee of a public trust. The largest component of U.S. government is the Pentagon, and it’s irresponsible. In 2018 it finally has a “comprehensive audit”, and it fails.
“The Pentagon has failed what is being called its first-ever comprehensive audit, a senior official said on Thursday, finding U.S. Defense Department accounting discrepancies that could take years to resolve.”
It is not to be expected that the U.S. government can ever do right or get it right in spending tax proceeds, whether for humanitarian aid or any other kind of aid. The system is not constructed so as to bring about that outcome. Despite this fact, the public support is intact because of the appeal of helping people in need out. It is the wrong idea of government as a help-agent that must be discarded.
8:24 am on December 22, 2018
