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From Insider Online and The Heritage Foundation:
InsiderOnline Blog: January 2012
The Insider, Winter 2012: Liberty Requires Defense
By all means, let’s root out waste in the defense budget, but let’s not think that defense is, as other areas of the federal budget are, just another optional government program. You can find that and other wise counsel in the pages of The Insider, Winter 2012. Here is the editor’s note:
“Government as such, is not only not an evil but the most necessary and beneficial institution as without it no lasting cooperation and no civilization could be developed and preserved.”
Some may be surprised to learn that the author of this sentence was Ludwig von Mises, who was no worshipper of state power. Von Mises, in fact, led a courageous life battling the intellectual forces supporting all manner of state-led social engineering in the 20th century.
Von Mises understood that human nature made limits on government necessary—and some government indispensable: “[I]in order to preserve peace, it is, as human beings are, indispensable to be ready to repel by violence any aggression, be it on the part of domestic gangsters or on the part of external foes. Thus, peaceful human cooperation, the prerequisite of prosperity and civilization, cannot exist without a social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, i.e., without a government.”
This wisdom should guide today’s efforts to cut government spending. That project is needed not merely to help the economy, but also to get the federal government out of areas that should be left to the people. The task thus calls for judgment about the appropriate role of government, something that will not be accomplished merely by “putting everything on the table.” We should begin by observing, as Mackenzie Eaglen and Marion Smith note in our cover story, there are people in the world who mean the United States harm. History teaches that there always have been. The Founder’s anticipated that: They gave us a government of limited and enumerated powers, and defending the people was one of those powers.
In other stories this issue, Derek Scissors and J. D. Foster point to the lessons of Japan’s “Lost Decade,” Scott Hodge outlines how our tax code is broken, the Georgia Family Council shares its plan for finding solutions in civil society, and Isabel Isidro advises how to get your Web content found.
Posted on 01/06/12 12:23 PM by Alex Adrianson
InsiderOnline Blog: January 2012
The Insider, Winter 2012: Liberty Requires Defense
By all means, let’s root out waste in the defense budget, but let’s not think that defense is, as other areas of the federal budget are, just another optional government program. You can find that and other wise counsel in the pages of The Insider, Winter 2012. Here is the editor’s note:
“Government as such, is not only not an evil but the most necessary and beneficial institution as without it no lasting cooperation and no civilization could be developed and preserved.”
Some may be surprised to learn that the author of this sentence was Ludwig von Mises, who was no worshipper of state power. Von Mises, in fact, led a courageous life battling the intellectual forces supporting all manner of state-led social engineering in the 20th century.
Von Mises understood that human nature made limits on government necessary—and some government indispensable: “[I]in order to preserve peace, it is, as human beings are, indispensable to be ready to repel by violence any aggression, be it on the part of domestic gangsters or on the part of external foes. Thus, peaceful human cooperation, the prerequisite of prosperity and civilization, cannot exist without a social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, i.e., without a government.”
This wisdom should guide today’s efforts to cut government spending. That project is needed not merely to help the economy, but also to get the federal government out of areas that should be left to the people. The task thus calls for judgment about the appropriate role of government, something that will not be accomplished merely by “putting everything on the table.” We should begin by observing, as Mackenzie Eaglen and Marion Smith note in our cover story, there are people in the world who mean the United States harm. History teaches that there always have been. The Founder’s anticipated that: They gave us a government of limited and enumerated powers, and defending the people was one of those powers.
In other stories this issue, Derek Scissors and J. D. Foster point to the lessons of Japan’s “Lost Decade,” Scott Hodge outlines how our tax code is broken, the Georgia Family Council shares its plan for finding solutions in civil society, and Isabel Isidro advises how to get your Web content found.
Posted on 01/06/12 12:23 PM by Alex Adrianson
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