Big Government vrs. The Virtue of Governing Oneself

I’m all for gun and property rights. But I can’t understand people that always want to get tough on crime, particularly with stiffer prison sentencing. Can’t they be more imaginative? Why don’t they buy a gun, then get involved in some group or another to elevate the character of young people or the otherwise dispossessed.

The political culture is such that we are subjects of a massive state apparatus and comforted with infinite means to entertain ourselves, but why such little appreciation for the responsibilities that come with citizenship? with looking out for your own self-interest, especially in the community where you live? taking pride in your own capacity for self-governance?

Such prison policy is bearing fruit south of the border and it is rotten! … Reform is needed, and as the New York Times reports, it’s becoming a bipartisan issue.

I watched Gran Torino for the first time last night. Great movie!

There is a scene in Gran Torino where Clint Eastwood’s character, Walt, is asked why he didn’t call the police instead of confronting a gang outside his house. Walt’s response, “Well you know, I prayed for them to come but nobody answered. … when things happen quickly like that, you have to react.”

When faced with any individual or social “problem,” be it crime, the need for some agent of welfare, or even some public works project or another, we need to consider how civil society engenders a much larger definition than Big Government prefers to accommodate. Big Government is not the natural result of civil society, rather, Big Government is what Max Weber called an “iron cage,” and we require a responsible citizenry to moderate its role in civil society.

Consider what John von Heyking writes in his insightful review of “It’s the Regime, Stupid! A Report From the Cowboy West on Why Stephen Harper Matters:”

And so Canadians have come to view their sovereign as the agent of “gift giving,” … This decadent regime has been rendered possible by a decadent Christian culture that has forgotten the distinction between compassion, which benefits bureaucrats (because the purpose of compassion is to feel good about oneself), and caritas, for which the language of costs and benefits are irrelevant (because the purpose of caritas is love for another). Subjects of the modern regime need to balance their interest-calculation with some pride, which Cooper describes as a “something that you hold on to without qualification as to whether it is in your interest to do so – otherwise there would be no ‘you’ to have an interest.” …

In other words, too many take Big Government to be the default solution to whatever ails them. And yet, there is no virtue, no individual dignity to be gained, in not taking responsibility for your own life.