As long as I’ve been writing commentary on this site, I’ve received comments from proponents of  “small government,” who argue, paraphrasing Ronald Reagan and others, that small  government is better. 

What few of these proponents of “small government” seem to understand is that the combination of small government and high technology is not a recipe for freedom, but for oppression of everyone but the well-off by the well-off.  Now… I am not anywhere close to a fan of government for the sake of government or for more bureaucracy and government agencies, but the problem we face as a society is that technology, especially high technology, requires bigness, and bigness equals power, and government, and sometimes not even government, is about all that can rein in concentrated corporate power.

At one point, the United States did have small government.  We didn’t have food inspections, and the amount of tainted, spoiled, and bad food sold was enormous.  We didn’t have environmental regulations, and most major rivers were dead or dying, and little could live in them, and several were so polluted they caught fire.  The air was so filled with soot in some cities that white shirts were gray by noon. We didn’t have banking regulations, and on a regular basis there were widespread bank failures where depositors lost everything.  We didn’t even have standardized time zones, and train schedules were essentially unusable.

Today, the United States and the world is far more advanced – and complex. There are over 80,000 flights in the United States every day. Major airports average a takeoff and landing every 1-4 minutes. Despite all the complaints, the U.S. averages about one major commercial accident a year, and some years have passed without any. Without government-imposed uniform standards for operations, safety, and maintenance, those numbers would be far higher.  Without regulation of the communications spectrum, broadcasting would be either chaos or the property of broadcasters with the biggest wallets and the most powerful transmitters.

Despite the complaints and the touting of industry about its innovation, without government funding and research, we wouldn’t have the internet or the I-Phone.  Nor would we have the interstate highway system.  We would also have millions of people living and dying in extreme poverty – as they once did – as opposed to a less than perfectly efficient welfare/disability system that results in a much less than desirable and barely adequate standard of living for a majority of the unemployed or unemployable.

Yet despite the progress created by government, imperfect as it is, there is a lack of recognition of how it has improved life in the United States for virtually everyone, and the cries for small government continue.  What these people want, it seems to me, is less government regulation over that sector of commerce, business, or life that is most important to them, in particular, and fewer rules and regulations that impede their freedom of action and ability to maximize profits. 

Government is anything but perfect, and in many areas, its regulations are indeed cumbersome and sometime unnecessary.  In other areas, the regulations don’t work, and in some areas, more regulation is likely necessary.  But what that means is that we need more effective and efficient government, not the “small government” so often touted by both ultra-conservatives and ultra-libertarians. We tried small government, and it didn’t work for a moderately complex industrializing society, and it certainly won’t work for a society that’s even more complex in a world that is getting ever more complicated.

But then, the history of small government, and its copious failures, has already been forgotten, as so much of unpleasant history is, lost in the nostalgia for a time that never was.

Over the past two centuries especially, but for longer than that, authors, historians, pundits and others have debated the question of whether history repeats itself and what, if anything, we can learn from the study of history, Personally, I like Santayana’s statement about those who fail to learn the lessons of history being doomed to repeat them.  But I also like Twain’s comment that history doesn’t repeat itself, but that it rhymes.

To say that there’s been some upheaval caused by conflicts centered on the Islamic faith over the last half-century or so would be an understatement.  Some, such as Bill Maher, who dislikes all religion, but Islam in particular, have tended to overlook the historical “rhyme” presented by the crisis facing Islam today – and it is indeed a crisis, because Christianity entered a similar phase and crisis some five centuries ago, when the ideas coming out of the Renaissance, a more scientific outlook, and doubts about the infallibility of Church and the Papacy came to a head with brutal conflicts all across Europe that lasted more than a century and resulted in the Reformation and the fragmentation of the Catholic Church.  Too many Christians today tend to gloss over the brutality and the death toll that occurred during that period.  Historical records indicate that the death toll amounted to as much as half the population of the German principalities and a third of those living in Czech or Bohemian territories.  This was also the time period when the Inquisition effectively terrorized Spain, and when Protestant-Catholic strife wracked England.  In the end, the result was effectively the establishment of government in western Europe on primarily a secular basis [with a few notable exceptions], not that such governments were not initially highly influenced by religion and religious institutions.

We’re seeing a huge socio-politico-religious upheaval involving Islam today, largely centered in the Middle East and Northern Africa today, and that strife is largely the result of the impact of Western secularity and technology on societies that have essentially been governed on an Islamic basis largely at odds with the fundamental secular basis of western nations. and most likely at least partly, if not largely, incompatible with high technology and science.  Such secular beliefs as individual worth outside the religious structure, the greater personal value and political independence of women, the supremacy of science and the scientific mindset over religion and doctrine pose a tremendous threat to the existing social and religious structure in those nations – just as the Renaissance and the rise of science did to the Catholic Church five centuries ago, and that established Islamic structure is opposing and will continue to oppose change, just as happened in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, frankly, just as some fundamentalist Christian sects still oppose change.

Unhappily, the “lessons of history,” or their “rhymes,” as Twain put it, as well as what we are already observing suggest that the death toll will continue, and may well rise, because the fight over belief is central to human and social identity…and few give up old and familiar beliefs for newer “truths” without a struggle, especially if the new beliefs result in less power for those individuals (in this case, traditional Islamic males) who stand to lose the position that they have held through religion.

Recently, an article in New Scientist cited a study that showed readers of “literary fiction” displayed more empathy than did readers of “popular” fiction.  After the wave of nausea, disgust, and anger passed, I couldn’t help but think how great a disservice the  English-speaking “literati” have done to both authors and the reading public by making an artificial distinction – that supposedly represents quality – between popular and/or genre fiction and so-called literary fiction. This disdain seems to be less pronounced in the United Kingdom than in the United States, but that’s my view as an outsider to British literary circles.  Unfortunately, this distinction is reinforced by a goodly number of the F&SF publishers, possibly because they really don’t want it known that the distinction is artificial and that there are “literary-quality” genre books.  Heaven forbid, people might not read any F&SF book if they thought they might have to think, or perhaps it just makes marketing that much simpler.

Personally, I think most readers know exactly what they want to read, and even what type of book suits their mood at a particular time.  Despite the labels and marketing hype and misleading cover blurbs, experienced readers find authors who appeal to them. 

I have no problem with observations about the quality of writing, provided those observations are accurate and based on the words of the author, but I have a huge objection to automatically categorizing fiction on the basis of either genre or popularity. It’s definitely true that a great amount of best-selling “mainstream” fiction, i.e., popular fiction, does not present great depth and sophistication, and the same holds true for much of genre fiction – but not all of either is without depth and great skill in writing.  Just look at the consternation when everyone discovered that J.K. Rowling had published an “adult” novel under a pseudonym… and that it was considered rather good.

 Margaret Atwood, whether she will ever admit it or not, writes science fiction in a literary style, but it’s still science fiction.  So does Gene Wolfe, but Gene’s work is considered F&SF, while Atwood’s is literary fiction. There are more than a few F&SF titles published every month that, in terms of style, sophistication, and depth, meet every so-called “literary” criterion.  Yet, particularly in the United States, it seems to me, the literary establishment cannot seem to bear the thought that a genre writer, or a popular writer, might actually exhibit some skill while actually telling an entertaining story with depth and an exploration of life and meaning beyond the tried and true tropes that still seem to shackle so much of so-called literary fiction.

Despite the disdain of genre fiction, particularly F&SF, by American “literati,” more and more ideas and approaches from F&SF are turning up in so-called mainstream fiction, and, likewise, more “literary” approaches to writing are appearing in F&SF.  Both are very good developments;  it’s just too bad that all too many members of the self-proclaimed [if quietly and in a falsely self-deprecating manner that ostensibly denies such membership] American literati don’t understand that.  They’d do far better to concentrate on celebrating good fiction, regardless of labels.

Many years ago, I went to Washington, D.C., as a junior legislative director for a U.S. Congressman.  At that time, all or at least the vast majority of budget authorizations and appropriations bills were being passed by both House and Senate before the end of the fiscal year.  Several terms passed, and I became the staff director for another congressman, and the fiscal year was shifted several months to the present system because Congress was having trouble passing appropriations on time.  More years passed, and, after more time as a Congressional staff director, and then as a Director of Legislation at EPA, and a stint with a D.C. consulting firm,  I left Washington.  By then Congress was failing to pass quite a number of appropriations bills and relying more and more on stop-gap continuing resolutions.

We’re now to the point where, for the past three years, Congress has been unable to pass any individual appropriations bills and has lumped everything into a continuing resolution, or several sequential resolutions. And this year, Congress couldn’t even pass something like that on time and shut down a good-sized chunk of the government for half a month.  At the same time, the annual federal budget deficit has ballooned, although, as a result of a slightly improved economy and the cuts forced by the meat-ax of the “sequester,” the deficit has dropped considerably this past year.

And in another three months or so, we’ll likely go through another version of the same manufactured crisis.

Still… I have to ask, what gives?  When I left working for Congress more than thirty years ago, computers were in their infancy and most Congressional offices relied on electric typewriters and hand calculators.  So did most government agencies.  But everything got done, generally on time, if sometimes at the last moment.  Congress currently passes more legislation than it did thirty years ago, but accomplishes less of substance, and it argues over absolutely everything, or so it seems.

The Congress can’t seem to agree on much of anything, but then, from all the polls I’ve seen, and from talking to people everywhere, this lack of agreement in Congress seems to reflect a lack of agreement among those who elect members of Congress.

So is it really the fault of Congress?  Or is it ours… and it’s just much easier to blame the people we’ve elected when we insist that they follow the majority in their state or district, or we’ll remove them from office?  

Although Congress is apparently deadlocked, all members of Congress do agree on one thing.  Someone else should pay for it.  The far right wants the poor to pay… by cutting their benefits, access to insurance and various other assistance.  The left wants the richest to pay, and those in the middle want anyone else but the middle class to pay.  Those who are more affluent are tired of paying the largest share of taxes, and they want tax cuts.  Various industries want tax subsidies, and when one industry gets a lower tax bill than another, that is indeed a goody, regardless of the rationale. The same is true of tax breaks for individuals, for whatever reason.

This is likely the road to disaster, because what gets paid for will be decided by the votes bought on the extremes.  Despite paying the lowest tax rates in almost a century, the upper one percent will fight and bribe anyone they can, legally, of course, through contributions, to keep unrealistically low tax rates low, and to lower them more, if possible.

 The poorest Americans will vote where they can for programs that often provide better benefits than those enjoyed by the working poor holding down two jobs or more.  Those in the middle, if recent events are any indication, will get more and more upset at stagnant wages and higher costs of living and are likely to throw their lot in with the one percent… which will only maintain or increase the current deficit and make the increasing numbers of the poor and working poor angrier and angrier.

Corporations and businesses under pressure to post or increase profits will continue to lobby against any program or law that adds costs to their doing business and will likely press for anything to keep labor costs low, which is why they keep hiring part-timers and oppose the ACA.  The problem there is that the corporate tax rate is so riddled with loopholes that a huge percentage of large businesses don’t pay anything near the statutory rate.  In fact, the U.S. has just about the highest corporate tax rate on the books… and close to the lowest actual tax revenue, thanks to the loopholes.

Pretty much everyone in Congress seems to ask, publicly at least, “How will we pay for what we’ve done and want to do?”  But beyond that, nothing gets done on reducing long-term federal spending because each side insists that its programs are sacrosanct and its constituents are already paying too much in the way of taxes.

Right now, of course, the Republicans are blaming the President, just as two terms ago the Democrats were blaming the previous President.  What both parties publicly ignore and what the public somehow seems to forget is that the President can’t authorize or appropriate anything.  That’s up to Congress.  No one else.

Years ago, the Supreme Court declared that the President must spend what Congress orders spent… and the Administration must collect the taxes legislated by the Congress, or not collect them if Congress has legislated tax breaks.  This mess is Congress’ doing, not President Bush’s and not President Obama’s… and a good first step toward fixing it would be to recognize just that.