Language is a powerful thing, particularly when it’s used correctly to edify, not mislead. But in politics, the meaning of a word is a mere triviality if it limits the schemes of politicians to obtain a larger purpose.
We’ve seen this in government for years. It’s not new. It’s how charlatans are able to disguise their real intent by selecting a distorted term to lull an occasionally observant public into thinking one thing while the other is being accomplished in plain view. Some political wags are as gifted at diverting the public’s attention as a sideshow magician.
They do so routinely while administering the government, especially when they are spending other people’s money. Nothing gives them more pleasure than spending your money to ingratiate you and win your vote for reelection. They use your money to addict you to their bad habits. It’s an odd form of dependency, but one that sadly seems to work with many people. Witness how readily people have warmed to excessive spending in the age of COVID. There is nothing more dangerous to the republic than the lust for largess. Lord Alexander Fraser Tytler (1749-1813), a Scottish lawyer and professor, summed it up nicely.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
What could better describe our condition today as President Joe Biden and Congress huddle in a spending scrum to redistribute wealth across the land on projects designed to ensure their continuance in power? Nothing is so delightful as a check in the mail for $1,400, right? That shows your government “cares” about you, that it feels your “pain” and “hurt.” But these words distort how the majority of people actually think of themselves, COVID notwithstanding.
Besides, Congress doesn’t care about you, only their political wellbeing and reelection. Nor are we in “pain” or are “hurting.” These descriptions are used to weaken our spirit and incline us to government dependency as a way of life. As Tytler wrote, from liberty to abundance to selfishness to apathy to dependence and then onward “from dependence back into bondage.”
When big spenders look us in the face while declaring that they are “investing” in this or that, it’s a lie from the first utterance. They are investing in nothing. An investment is what we do with our financial advisor to acquire wealth or what a business does to promote economic growth. Government doesn’t create wealth. It seizes it, while using words like “investment” to suggest a benevolence that’s completely absent. If you’re robbed on the street of $100, and the
thief hands you back $20 as he flees the scene of the crime, you have been robbed.
Witness the most recent twisting of language as the Congress and the President seek to convince us they want to “invest” in American “infrastructure.” What that usually means is spending on highways, bridges, ports, and transportation facilities to facilitate the movement of people, goods, and services in our economy. Setting aside the efficacy of the government’s role in all of that, this has been the generally accepted scope of transportation bills that Congress has funded for many years. Now we are told that “infrastructure” is more than bridges and roads.
That term now includes “human infrastructure” as if our skeletal and muscular systems are insufficient to support us day to day.
No, now we’re told infrastructure is also public housing construction, caregivers for the elderly, and research and development for private industry. Is it any wonder that President Biden—a perpetual politician—has said this in support of a $2 trillion plan that actually only devotes a third of that to transportation infrastructure?
“To automatically say that the only thing that’s infrastructure is a highway, a bridge or whatever, that’s just not rational. It really isn’t.” President Biden – April 7th, 2021
And so the irrational charade continues. And we all seem quite willing to allow it to happen as the march “from dependence back into bondage” continues at a slow and certain pace.
Some people will scoff at this as senseless worrying. They would do well to heed the words of Lord Tytler as they lulled into senselessness.
Delegate L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and combat veteran. A former member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2002-2018), he is the author of Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War (University Press of Kentucky) and routinely contributes to the Washington Times commentary page on domestic and national policy.
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