By Les Dunaway

This past week has produced demagoguery and asinine statements which will echo down the  centuries. However, for all its entertainment value, the conversation has resembled an ER team arguing about what color sutures to use in closing bleeding self-inflicted gashes. It all reminds me of a joke my nurse mother told about a patient who said to the doctor “Doc, it hurts when I do that.” To which the doctor answered, “Well, the don’t DO that!”.  THAT’s the conversation we need, have needed, to be having.

Nelson Price, writing in today’s Marietta Daily Journal addressed the real problem – activities not authorized by the Constitution – “Lack of Constitutional Restraint Behind Budget Woes“.  I hope that all of you will read the quotes from our nations founders and do your own research for the many others.  I hope you will use the point-of-view expressed as a litmus test for candidates for all levels of government. There is NO place in the commerce of a free people for government.

We’ve had a great embarrassment to our state in the past weeks – the Atlanta School District. I hope that it’s clear that this embarrassment is a direct result of government being involved in activities not authorized by the Constitution.

Had the children of Atlanta been educated by free-market, private schools, paid-for-by and accountable-to the parents of those children, we would have had better-educated children and no basis for government-mandated testing. We would not have thousands of teachers who’s motivation is a government score rather than an educated child. We would not have a bloated bureaucracy that coerced cheating in pursuit of those same scores.

Do you know what “services” your city, county, state, nation provides? Can you make a case for 1) the need and 2) the Constitutional basis for having that need met by a government unit?  Tim Pawlenty recently proposed the “google” test – if you can find it on google, the government shouldn’t be involved. This may be a little tongue-in-cheek, but it point’s in the right direction.

An aspect of “government services” that’s often overlooked is that actual services are never provided above the lowest level. At all the layers of  bureaucracy above, the activity is “coordination” or “regulation” – in other words, government drones who have never held a real job in their lives telling the people on the ground how they should do their jobs.

Only when the last “public employee” is fired will our nation be safe from endless repetitions of the current financial mess.