Kings still can’t control the weather

BY RANDY ALCORN
From ancient times on up through the Middle Ages, monarchs, in many civilizations, were believed to have power over forces of nature. If the tribe or nation were afflicted with drought, pestilence, famine, or epidemic disease, the king or queen was held responsible. Imagine the burden of office back then.

Today, while civilization has become more technologically advanced, the accumulated intelligence of the general population is, apparently, arrested somewhere in the Dark Ages. Political rulers are still being held responsible for vast, complex phenomenon that they cannot possibly control.
The economy is one such phenomenon for which politicians, especially the president of the U.S., is credited or condemned. Like weather, the economy is a vast, complex phenomenon that defies perfect prediction and is beyond the control of mere mortals; even beyond the control of politicians who have deluded the populace and, perhaps, themselves into believing that they have preternatural powers.
Economic conditions result from millions of individual decisions deriving from the tug and pull of human desire, greed, and enterprise. No president or any ideology has, ultimately, ever been able to effectively control the entire economy.
Nevertheless, since the Great Depression, politicians have gradually convinced the public that government is the ultimate provider of solutions for a myriad of social and economic ills. The result is that the naïve public has now come to expect government to make good on its claims of superpowers—the king must bring rain and end the drought, right? When the rain doesn’t come, when government fails to solve thorny problems, the natives grow restless. To the chagrin of kings and politicians, the consequence of their pretended powers makes them scapegoats for a petulantly disillusioned public.
Such is the case in Santa Barbara, where following the third gang related homicide blatantly committed on busy city streets in recent months, the city’s elected officials, and in particular mayor Marty Blum, have become the objects of pointed criticism by some of the local media and among a consternated public.
However, gang violence is one of those resiliently pernicious social phenomena that defy politicians’ attempts to eradicate it. Without abandoning the founding principles of our free nation by imposing police state conditions, as some local citizens, scared witless, have proposed, violent gangs, once established, are harder to eradicate than plantar warts.
Mayor Marty Blum is no more responsible for gang violence in Santa Barbara than she is for the local weather. As is the case with other communities across the nation, the source of gang violence in Santa Barbara is found in illegal immigration.
America eventually pays a high price for the low-cost labor provided by illegal immigration. Gang violence is part of that price along with crowded schools and diluted public education, overrun emergency rooms and bankrupted hospitals, increased welfare costs and strained government budgets.
We have tolerated illegal immigration with a wink and a nod at our Spanish-speaking gardeners, painters, construction workers, and busboys. We have accommodated them with bilingual signage, documents, even election ballots. Who is to blame for gang violence? You cannot continually and rapidly introduce massive numbers of undereducated, overworked, and low paid, non-English speaking aliens into this affluent society and not suffer serious consequences.
The truth of the matter is that government is not very effective at solving many of the problems confronting society nor is it necessarily responsible for those problems. Nevertheless, politicians continue to take more of our money and more of our freedom in exchange for promises to solve problems that they never really solve.
When a problem like gang violence plagues communities, government gets the blame. Politicians then typically overreact with some shallowly thought out program to address the problem and then pretend that program is working. The war on drugs, with ineffective programs such as DARE, is a primary example of government futility, delusion, and self-serving overreach.
The proper and healthy role of government in a free society is that of a referee enforcing sensible rules of civil and commercial conduct. Too often our elected politicians behave like coaches calling the plays for the game rather than like referees throwing penalty flags for violations of fair play.
The sub-prime mortgage fiasco results from politicians of both parties not flagging banks and lending institutions for usury. Gang violence results from those same politicians not enforcing immigration laws. Packed prisons and much violent crime results from politicians calling the plays on life’s victimless personal choice regarding drug use.
Liberty is not without risks, and a free society can be dangerous. Government’s role in a free society is limited, and politicians are never omnipotent. Expecting government to solve all of our problems is like expecting the king to control the weather. Better we insist that government fulfill its proper role as referee. Maybe then there would be fewer problems to solve.