Maggie's Farm

Jonah Goldberg begins:

The government thinks you’re stupid, or at least ignorant.

This isn’t just an indictment of the current government or an indictment of government itself. It’s simply a statement of fact. At its core, the government exists to do certain things that people aren’t equipped to do on their own. The list of those things has gotten longer and longer over the years. In 1776, the federal government’s portfolio could have easily fit in a file folder: maintain an army and navy, a few federal courts, the post office, the patent office, and maybe a dozen or two other pretty obvious things.

Now, the file folder of things the federal government does is much bigger.

Read the entire brief post. It is in the government's interest to keep us all ignorant, poor, weak, and unresourceful serfs on the government plantation. That is not American, it's European or worse. Even "colonial." If your taxes approach 40%, you are a serf of the State. Feudalism endures and the bank accounts of the mandarins grow fat.

Typically, serfs in England owed 30-50% of their production to the Lord, who in turn owed some fraction of that, plus soldiers when needed, to the King.