Most of us are taught from a young age that government can do great things for us, and that it will be able to do even more starting on that wonderful day when our own political favorites are finally directing it!
I remember once at the age of five being filled with emotions, which I was absorbing from my parents and television commentators, on the day of a presidential election. Of course, I had no intellectual basis for being able to judge which candidate, if either, might be better. I later began to understand how emotion and political marketing trump reason and truth daily. From this perspective, my five-year-old self may have already been exposed to the essence of the political process—image and emotion over reality and truth.
With honest study of theory and history, the scope of what government appears capable of successfully “doing,” no matter who is running it, tends to shrink steadily with time and understanding. Government, it turns out, is indeed doing a great deal, but most of it is harmful—damaging to our societies as a whole, but always beneficial to certain interests at the expense of everyone else. The state is at heart a mechanism for benefitting special interests at the expense of “the common good.” This has been unmistakably demonstrated in case after case, but most people are largely unaware of such compelling evidence.
We could all be much better off without these endless shackles and impediments that we are taught to believe are the most necessary and helpful things imaginable. That we are taught in this way is not coincidental.