By Chris Basten

  Need a marriage pick-me-up? Need a third-world country bombed into oblivion? Or how about your roads fixed? Need health care insurance? How about a prison system? Do you need the TV to stop swearing and showing so much sex? Do you want people to stop smoking marijuana? Need to shut down a huge corporation? Do you need new property to build your own house? How about permission to install an air conditioner? How about public education? Need a license to drive or practice medicine? Would you like faith-based charities to receive your hard-earned money? Wish to unarm all citizens? Do you desire to see people stop gambling, smoking, and visiting prostitutes? Do you want people to wear seat belts and wear motorcycle helmets? Want to squelch unpopular political views with a federal raid? How about a random foreclosure? Want to whip obese people into shape?

If the government were a used car salesman, this is what advertisements for their endless barrage of "services" would sound like. Has it ever occurred to anyone how ridiculous it is to have the same behemoth organization running wars in a foreign country while making sure your dentist is licensed in this one? How can the same thinking go into such completely different areas of life? The same establishment can make sure that a delivery room has the highest sterility standards throughout national hospitals and yet has no qualms about using the same "cleansing" principles to drop bombs and rain bullets upon poor, unsuspecting villagers who barely have fresh, running water. The same institution that incarcerates 2 million people is the same one that makes sure our toilet tanks don't waste too much water. The same organization that gives you grief (and a heavy fine to boot) about throwing a used Snickers wrapper on an interstate highway is the same one that can raid a nice, quiet household for suspected drug possession. What is going on here?!

It's government efficiency, can't you see?! Would you go to Home Depot and ask for a fresh, 100% Angus steak? Would you berate Saks Fifth Avenue to include playground equipment within their inventory? Would you have a housing inspector give you a pelvic exam? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are either on your eighth bottle of Corona or you are not taking your medication. The mere mention of the above questions is laughable and yet we expect the government to do all of the things it has no business doing.

If my toilet is clogged, I am going to call a plumber, not paranoid ATF agents to kick in my door and make sure that my drainage isn't backed up with bags of cocaine. If I want to file a complaint about a business's services, I am going to do so with its manager, not with my local police force. The State has no business dealing in these scenarios because I can take care of my own affairs. Besides, even if I did need the government in these hypothetical situations, they would create a mountain out of a mole hill and would make the process full of paperwork and high expense. They always do. It's the only way the government knows how to do anything.

It frightens and enrages me that the same government forces can set up anal-retentive standards in residential housing for mentally and physically handicapped people but can also take children away from their parents upon mere suspicions of abuse or neglect with no evidence. It overwhelms me that people in Afghanistan and Iraq have uranium levels in their blood high enough to kill a whole herd of elephants brought to them by the same U.S. forces that mandate getting vaccinations and quality healthcare in America. How can the same affiliation of well-intentioned men and women in good-looking suits and ties set up standards that keep national parks spic and span and yet allow barges to dump garbage a mere 2 miles away from the Jersey coast? Something is seriously wrong with this line of thinking.

And, yet, this is what our tax dollars support. Every time the government spends our money on something we value, like education, they spend 100 times as much on something we don't value, like two Mars probes staring at rocks and red clay. This is detrimental not only to our future as a nation but is a threat to all of humanity. No other government has the kind of money and power that the U.S. does and the bigger it gets the more ominous the threat becomes.

I recently read about a brilliant solution to our government's never ending one-stop shopping spree. Switzerland has done quite well in separating the State from its private affairs. Though I am against taxation, I like Swiss thinking. One entity collects what taxes the State needs but is not allowed to spend it. A separate unit then spends what has been collected. One governing body cannot invade the other. So if the spending faction needs money, they have to negotiate with the collectors. If the collectors find that the spenders are asking for too much, they simply say 'no.' The two seem to balance each other out for the most part. This is the kind of thinking that America needs. No more can we allow for the same futile system to collect and spend on a whim. The lack of accountability is killing thousands overseas and is destroying global economics.

Depending on the U.S. government to solve all of our problems has made us all worse off. The Senate and Congress masturbate with our money and spend in areas they have no business associating with. A government, should it exist at all, is meant to protect our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-nothing more, nothing less. The State has strayed far off course with these simple principles. It is high time we pushed for our Constitution and Bill of Rights to be read daily and well known by our leaders otherwise they should be in the unemployment lines with the rest of us. It's time we downsize government or put it out of business entirely. Government is a useless force that beats a dead horse over and over again with good intentions instead of burying it and admitting it's done for. Until the Government gives up the idea that it can save the world, we are done for. I hope one day they will include this on their shopping list.