Government is not "all of us": Why only individual liberty counts as self-rule

This past May, President Obama gave the commencement address at the University of Ohio. His speech, which hailed citizenship and democratic participation, included the following passage:

"Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.

We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn't want to. But we don't think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it's not about what American can do for us, it's about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process."

Yet Obama’s remarks could not have come at a more ironic time. A mere two weeks after the commencement address, the administration was embroiled in four simultaneous scandals that made government look anything but trustworthy. First, increasing scrutiny of the Benghazi attacks fueled suspicion that administration officials knowingly blamed an unrelated YouTube video to deflect presidential scrutiny in the midst of a delicate campaign season. Next, the IRS shockingly confessed that the bureau responsible for granting non-profit groups tax exempt status had intentionally targeted conservative applicants for additional scrutiny, creating headaches for political opponents by erecting disproportionate bureaucratic hurdles on ideological grounds. At the same time, it leaked that the Department of Justice had secretly seized over 20 pages of AP phone records, casting serious doubt on its stated commitment to transparency and the freedom of press. And that very month, Edward Snowden revealed to The Guardian that the NSA was engaged in massive telephone and internet surveillance programs, often without any legal permission or accountability, and had lied about it before Congress to preserve the secrecy of these programs.

With both Obama and rumored 2016 presidential candidate Hilary Clinton involved, conservatives predictably saw these scandals as an opportunity for political gain. House republicans launched numerous hearings and investigations with the general aim of making a fuss. Inversely, Democrats scrambled to contain the blame for these incidents as far down the ladder as possible. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed she had no knowledge of requests for additional security at the Benghazi embassy. Attorney General Eric Holder recused himself from the AP investigation, claiming that deputy Attorney James M. Cole had signed the order to seize the phone records. And in the only question President Obama answered on the matter, he insisted that he learned of the IRS scandal from the same media reports as everyone else.

In the age of sensationalism, proving some high-ranking official was “in” on these decisions would make for some juicy tabloid fodder. Conservatives seeking a silver bullet to get Obama out of office have put forth elaborate hypotheses speculating on how the White House itself might have been involved. But these people are missing the point. In the bigger picture the identity of these particular culprits means very little, and launching a partisan witch hunt to find them distracts from the true significance of the scandals. Trevor Burrus of the CATO Institute explains:

“[W]e don’t need high-level conspiracies to point out that abuses of power, even by low-level officials, can be expected. Moreover, as government grows larger it becomes both less accountable and more important to our lives, thus giving government officials both more leverage and more freedom to misbehave.”

"Part of being president is there's so much beneath you that you can't know because the government is so vast."

These decisions affect 100% of Americans, but the vast majority of us get no say in making them whatsoever. Instead, they’re made by the people hired by the people indirectly appointed by the Cabinet Secretaries selected by the president – a president who was only ever voted for by 1/6 of the American population in the first place. This is self-rule?

What this and a thousand other examples clearly demonstrate is that government is not all of us. Government is some of us, who are anointed by others of us to wield authority over the rest of us. From the most liberal democracy to the most oppressive monarchy, all governments subject their subjects to the whims of other people. Only in the absence of government are people truly sovereign over their own lives. Only individual freedom can be credibly called a form of self-government.

The president is correct that some government is necessary, and for those places where it is a restrained democracy is perhaps the least-bad method. But the reason we need government is the exact same reason it cannot be given the unquestioning faith Obama seems to expect: people are often selfish, greedy, immoral, and prejudiced, and this applies as much to the governors as it does to the governed. Elected officials are of no higher moral fiber than the rest of us, which means if we the people cannot be trusted to live without them watching over us, they certainly cannot be trusted without us watching over them. The larger and more powerful bureaucracy becomes, the more difficult that task, and the less accountable and transparent our government will be.

Burrus concludes with the point Americans should take away from this summer’s controversies:

“[T]he most common form of government misconduct does not usually involve devious scheming by politicians. Instead, it is often both less insidious and more invidious—the cumulative effects of misconduct by less-accountable, low-level officials who enjoy immense power over small areas of our lives...[more abuses] can be expected if the government continues to grow larger and more powerful. It is simply too large an organization for anyone to control.

Andrew Doris is a Junior political science major from West Chester, Pennsylvania. He is also the Newsletter's Opinions Editor.