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I regularly read about the desire for a smaller, more efficient government. How that efficiency should look, is honestly a mystery to me. I don’t treat myself or other people efficiently. Don’t expect efficient manners, but human ones. And one more thing. I have always loved based on the conviction that love and efficiency cannot sleep in the same bed. Not even in the old-fashioned small double bed. Because the idea of achieving the intended goal with the least means comes at a price for love, for morality, for righteousness and so on.
Yes, but if you use the available means efficiently, you can achieve more with those means. That is the most common objection. Then I think to myself that these people have come to believe in their own limitations. They make the mistake of thinking that everything is quantifiable without any distinction in quality, and that only quantity counts for them. If you can only cut back, everything will improve.
There is a lot to be said for that. How did I read that recently, I don’t remember where, but it doesn’t matter. Knowledge, certainly scientific knowledge, transcends the individual’s own interests, especially when it is shared. I believe it was a quote that said: for those who are open to it, the beauty is endless. Indeed, the beauty that those who have an eye for it see is a characteristic of the truth, to paraphrase Herman Boerhaave’s* motto. Simplex sigillum veritas est.* Don’t think that I speak and write Latin fluently. It’s more that I had to copy out 200 expressions from the Latin textbook as punishment so often that I still know them by heart 55 years later. The same can be said of love; that love does not end if you have an eye for it. Recognizing her in everything. Although there is a difference in the depth of the experience. One can never say what it was that stopped you from delving into your feelings of deepest affection. While that is often forgotten, it can be said that the most special quality of love is that those who know how to love look at everything with love. That in the memory of our loved ones, love outlives life. This is partly because our grief and sense of loss are also an indicator of both our love and that we have not lost love.
What does that have to do with a smaller and more efficient government? I will tell you. Two positions are possible with regard to the government. One based on trust* and one based on distrust. That trust in the government means that you can find the answer to the famous two-part question during the inauguration of President J.F. Kennedy. The speech on January 20, 1961, to the Americans and the rest of the world in which he accepted the office of president. My fellow Americans, don’t ask what your country can do for you, but ask yourself what you can do for the freedom of humanity.*
I would like to add that if you believe in the equality of all people before the law, the same applies to love. A feeling that is essentially not bound by any law. To which everyone is equally entitled. Almost sovereign as a feeling that no law can supersede. If only because love is divine, because it brings us closer together. To a community where love for your fellow man is the highest attainable and most conceivable ideal. I think I still have the heart of a hippie. Cherish those ideas of a new world.
That brings me back to where I started. The number of tasks that belong to the government is virtually endless. Yet two tasks stand out. The caring government is, by virtue of its power, the only one that can monitor compliance with the rules that protect the weak against the strong. And the strong government is the only insurance company that offers us the security of a better future for all. It protects us from the law of the jungle. The brutality of predatory states that essentially means a conservative radicalization of neoliberalism. A philosophy that more or less boils down to the belief that the free market can be used to market the individual with all his characteristic qualities and feelings for the benefit of a few. In my view and within my understanding, this is tantamount to a form of Platonic prostitution. What is typical of economic liberalism is that producers and entrepreneurs see themselves as the ideal measure for others. Others who must submit to their pursuit of dehumanized efficiency. This leads to the commercialization of democratic rights.
The wet dream of liberals who believe that government coercion should be banned. Preferably completely eliminated so that nothing stands in the way of their evil nature and trading in bad faith. To which I can only say: Freedom does not exist by virtue of the absence of government coercion. This only leads to anarchy. Freedom is more about the equal distribution of that coercion among all. What makes it possible for people to remain free of the evil intentions of others with the least amount of coercion. Which leads to the loving conclusion:
Pour l’autre, l’enfer n’existe que s’il ne connaît pas l’amour. The other only has hell if he does not know love. (quote Ludo)
Ludo
