Julian E. Zelizer: An "Abundance Agenda" for Gov't is the Anti-DOGE

Well, that's a view I guess.

There are things government can do better than private industry. However, there's a cost. Growing government is inherently bad even if it's sometimes worth it. For one thing, we already have an overpowered government that exerts too much control over our lives--and which is, then, ripe for abuse. Furthermore, it's already being abused. Finally, Conquest's Second Law of Organizations (possibly apocryphal) seems to have turned out to be true: any organization not right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. For whatever reason--I hypothesize it's the totalitarian tendencies of the left--leftists...and even, I suppose, I must reluctantly add: liberals...tend to take over organizations and bend them to their political purposes. See e.g. universities. The government has become a vast patronage system mostly to the benefit of Democrats. Consequently, even when a good idea for expanding government comes along--say, just as an example I have no opinion on, Obamacare--we have to figure in the cost: it will be turned into a center of Democrat power that distributes lots of money to smaller, often NGO, Dem organizations. Which then also work to spread Democrat ideas and polices, engage in selective GOTV campaigns, pay huge salaries to Democrat administrators, etc. etc.

   DEI has spread largely because the Democrats control so much of government. Government became a delivery system for a bad set of ideas that, whatever they were ideally, were de facto a mechanism for spreading and enforcing progressive-left ideas, ideals and policies. Which have been outright Orwellian for at least the last decade.

   I used to oppose tax-exempt status for churches for roughly this reason--I thought we were basically publicly funding organizations dedicated to spreading conservative views--conservative political views, that is. I still have this concern...though it also concerns me how rapidly (and eagerly) so many churches seem to have adopted Woketarian madness. Anyway, I had sort of come to see churches as important counterbalances to the leftist consolidation of power in the government... Now I don't know what to think.

   I barely understand any of this anyway.