Pushback Against Big Government

Elite big government supporters are shocked by the Brexit vote, and they’re not sure what it means. Conservatives believe the smaller the government, the better, so I’m pleased. Elites in Europe fear more countries will pull out of the European Union, while elites over here are finally sensing similar unrest in America.

Moving from big-government Massachusetts to rural Maine in 1977, I quickly learned that local control was prized. There was, for example, a movement to withdraw my new town of Lovell from the Maine School Administrative District #72 which it had joined only a few years before. Lovell had run its own schools for a century and a half and bristled under the new bureaucracy. There had been a choice of three high schools: Fryeburg Academy, Gould Academy, or Bridgton Academy, but no more. I was Director of Special Education, a district-wide job requiring me to travel around to six elementary and junior high schools to supervise staff. The position was created because of a federal mandate and it was all about meetings, paperwork, phone calls, paperwork, and more meetings.

The new district borrowed to build the New Suncook School in Lovell. It wasn’t paid off yet so that was an issue in Lovell’s pulling out. It was overcrowded already and just down the street was the old, unused Annie Heald School, a wooden building owned by the town. The superintendent asked me to attend a Lovell Budget Committee meeting to inquire about the district leasing it. I was new in town, so I introduced myself and made the pitch. The Yankee Republicans who dominated the committee in those days looked at me silently for nearly a full minute after I was done. “Any questions?” I asked. One older guy with sharp eyes and arms folded across his chest said, “Yeah, I have a question.”

Annie Heald School on right

“Okay,” I said.

“Ten years ago, when the superintendent wanted Lovell to join this new district, he said the Annie Heald School was a firetrap and they had to build a new school. Now, after the old school has been sitting there for ten years with nothing done to it, they say they want to use it again?”

“Good question,” I said. I had no idea about any of that and felt that I’d been set up. Locals believed they’d been manipulated by the “bigger is better” argument bureaucrats use, and maybe they had. A few years later, the old school burned to the ground after everyone got out safely. The effort to pull out failed though, because people like me with young families were moving up from Massachusetts and other states. We thought ourselves better educated and believed bigger was better too. I do not believe that anymore.

Shortly after, I was elected a selectman and served with two Yankee Republicans who thought Lovell people knew what was best for Lovell, that their judgement was better than the state’s or the federal government’s and they could govern themselves more effectively if they were left alone. After nine years I became convinced they were right, and that was one of the realizations pushing my political perspective from the big-government left to the small-government right where it has been ever since.

I supervised two federal programs — Title I and Special Education. Since then, the feds have taken over the school lunch program and now curriculum as well. More tax revenue goes to Augusta and Washington and what little comes back has strings attached — most recently, regulations concerning transgenders in locker rooms and bathrooms.

Back then, I was one of only three administrators and two secretaries in a district with 1200 students K-8. Now there are Now there are 1160 students but double the administrators, way more secretaries, way more teachers, much bigger buildings, much more paperwork, many more meetings, and a much bigger budget. Is there more learning going on for all that? After thirty-four years teaching in the district, I have to say no, and I could make a strong case that there’s actually less.

Shut it down

The federal government has also taken over health care — doing about the same with that as they have with schools. Working with the United Nations, the feds are planting refugees all over the country — a hundred here, five hundred there — often without informing local cities and towns they’re coming. Students in Manchester, NH schools speak 82 different languages, a severe strain. The mayor there has asked the feds to stop but they won’t. Washington knows what’s best for Manchester. When Lewiston, Maine’s mayor said his city couldn’t accept any more Somali refugees, big government liberals called him a racist. There are similar problems in Portland, where one out of seven people are foreign born.

Nigel Farage to EU president

Similar problems have been plaguing the UK and other EU countries for decades, and they were a major factor in the Brexit vote. Big government elites running the EU say the UK should take still more refugees. Ordinary Brits want local control and last week they shocked the elites by voting to leave the EU. More countries will follow. As liberal elites push for more central government power, ordinary citizens are pushing back.

An Idea. A Philosophy

Tuesday, June 2nd is the last day of my encore US History class. At this writing, I have only two more classes left to tie up all that I’ve taught them through the year. To that end, I’ve decided to quote two foreigners who looked at the United States from the outside and described what is great about our country.

The first is Bono, head of the rock band U2, who said: “It’s not a left/right issue. It’s a right/wrong issue, and America has constantly been on the side of what’s right.”

I was quite surprised to hear him say that because he was speaking at Georgetown University - an ostensibly Catholic institution that has become a liberal bastion.  It’s full of professors who probably cringed when they heard it because they’d spent their careers magnifying America’s flaws to the point where all the right things we’ve done are overshadowed.

Slick Willy at Georgtown

“America is an idea,” the Irishman Bono continued. “That’s how we see you around the world: As one of the greatest ideas in human history… The idea is that you and me are created equal… If we have dignity, if we have justice, then leave it to us. We’ll do the rest… This country was the first to claw its way out of darkness and put that on paper.”

He’s talking, of course, about our Declaration of Independence, which laid out our founding principles. Then our Founding Fathers wrote a constitution to make sure “we have dignity” and “we have justice” as Bono put it. That constitution put restrictions on government to see that it didn’t get too big or too powerful and take away that dignity and justice.

“Then leave it to us,” he said. “We’ll do the rest.” In this, he was absolutely right. Government should stay out of our way because the best government is that which governs least,” as John O’Sullivan put it back in the 19th century.

But it isn’t lately. Ours is becoming the government that governs most,  intruding into nearly every aspect of our lives. It’s regulating everything from baby furniture to soda pop to the carbon dioxide we exhale, and there’s no end in sight.

Then there’s this quote from the other foreigner: “Europe was created by history,” said former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “America was created by philosophy.” Not only did America jettison the European idea of the Divine Right of Kings, we designed a replacement system that restricted government as much as possible while still preserving order.

Thatcher also said: “There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labor-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe.”

That agrees with Bono’s remarks at Georgetown. He had gone on to praise capitalism as the best way to stem poverty. Speaking about Africa, he said: “Entrepreneurial Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than [foreign] aid.” The progressives in audience must have gasped because then he said: “Rock star preaches capitalism. Wow!” He put his hand to his head and declared: “Sometimes I hear myself and I just can’t believe it.”

Bono appeared to be speaking from his heart and not from notes. What slipped out had become his truth: The best government is the one that, to the greatest extent possible, gives everyone and everything a good leaving alone. If we’re free to, we usually do what’s right.

Small government is the original design for America. It was the American way and it could be again if we dust off the Constitution and actually apply it. That’s what I want to leave my students with.