PA, Pennsylvania

I will give you some absolutes!
Lack of any government is anarchy. I do not support anarchy. I would prefer a government that would remember its duly appointed place – limited to its enumerated powers as listed in the US Constitution.

I think we all agree that anarchy is bad, and that totalitarian/authoritarian rule is bad. The conflict we have is of how MUCH government is good, what role government should serve, and at what point it becomes totalitarianism.

Re enumerated powers, etc.:

As I have mentioned in other posts, a government that has strict enumerated powers, no implied powers, and can only do specifically what is outlined in its defining document will default into a fail state, as history has shown us with the Articles of Confederation. It just doesn't work, because no document can anticipate all the problems a government will face, let alone the correct solutions to those problems, never mind the fact that being utterly beholden to the State Governments as you seem to desire and as the Articles of Confederation mandated leaves the central government utterly beholden to a collection of state governments which are just as, if not more self-serving than the Federal government, who will (as history has shown us) tend to put the interests of their own state above the common interests of all states (just as local and county governments will do within the state governments). A strong, central government with the power to mandate to the states action that will provide for and increase the common defense of all states (or more specifically, their people), and the general welfare of all people is not inherently bad or evil or wrong, and is in fact critically necessary to a functioning society, as well as a moral and ethical obligation.

This is also something of a moot point, though, because the U.S. Constitution DOES specifically enumerate to Congress the power to provide for "the general welfare." Article 1, Section 8 specifically states "debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States." This can take many different forms, from the creation and funding of national parks and forests, to the funding of the construction and maintenance of a national interstate super-highway system, to the creation of the US Air Force (which Congress would not have the power to create and fund without this clause of Article I, Section 8, because the framers of the constitution did not see fit to specifically enumerate to Congress the right to raise and fund an Air Force), to providing medicare and social security and other assistance for our elderly and impaired, and a thousand other programs that we, and our society as a whole, benefits from every day.

So, per its Constitutionally-enumerated powers, Congress DOES have the authority to raise taxes, etc. to fund projects it deems necessary or appropriate to provide for the common defense and general welfare. Furthermore, while non-profit charity organizations certainly have their place and fill a vital role in society, there are many things that they can't do, or aren't well-equipped to do, ESPECIALLY on the macro scale. These are things which the federal and state governments are well-equipped to do.

Additionally, most charities receive government funding of some sort or another, and many people deduct their charitable contributions from their income tax, meaning that, ultimately, a huge percentage of the operations of non-profit charity organizations is already funded by the government, directly or in-directly. Government assistance programs simply shorten the path even further, so that government funding is going directly into the programs, instead of through charity organizations, tax deductions, etc. Government is also very efficient at this, with only a small percentage going to overhead costs (Medicare, for example, only has an operating cost overhead of about 4%), with effectively nil fundraising costs since funds for social assistance and charity programs are generated through the existing tax system, which we would have regardless of whether government provided funding for various social programs, charities, etc.

Furthermore, 100% dependence on charitable giving instead of a mix of charity and fed/state taxes for social assistance programs means that you are 100% dependent on the majority of people, and especially the majority of people with a lot of extra money to give, having very high levels of altruism. As much as I champion the human race and the good that the species can accomplish, expecting 300 million people to all increase their charitable giving by a percentage that equals the percentage of their tax dollars that goes to charity and social assistance programs, instead of spending it on past-due bills, or a new computer game, or new glasses for their kids, or to help pay for a house of their own, is painfully naive.

Re Europe, dictators, etc.:

Europe has been around a lot longer than the U.S., with the vast, vast, vast majority of their governments existing in the period of history that constitutes the 99% of human existence before the concepts of freedom, self-government, equality, and the rejection of such notions as Divine Right, etc. really took hold, and before the industrial revolution really gave the common people the ability to TAKE control and power away from oppressive rulers. The entire history of what now constitutes the U.S. took place almost exclusively within that 1% of history in which the common people were able to stand up and take the reigns of a government and society away from the small clade of super-rich aristocratic nobles who have ruled humanity for most of its existence.

During our revolution, when we were throwing off the yoke of that aristocratic oppression, Europe was going through a similar period of revolution, a period that had been on-going for decades before our Revolutionary War (and which contributed to many of the ideas, principles and ideals upon which our Revolution and our Nation were founded). It was flavored with European history and politics, but it was still ultimately just a different branch of the same revolution in humanity (the over-throw of the rule of nobles in a feudalist government ordained by divinity or just straight force of arms in favor of the rule of law in a democratic republic governed by the people, for the people, and of the people). Sure, Europe and Russia, and Asia have all had their share of dictators and oppressors the last couple centuries, but the setting for their revolution from aristocratic feudalism to representative democracy was different than ours, with different players, different starting conditions, etc. Europe saw a lot of competition between nations, and the revolutions in European nations did not all occur at once - they occurred at different times, in different ways, and were affected by the interactions of their immediate neighbors in Europe. In the U.S., our revolution was remarkably uniform by comparison. We also had a particularly outstanding group of people leading our revolution. If the Russian revolution that overthrew the Czars was lead by someone like Washington (who reportedly refused an offer to overthrow congress and assume military control as King not once but three times), instead of Lenin, the USSR may well have been a very different entity (the Soviet Union, a constitutional democratic republic not all that different from our own on paper, suffered from a lack of strong checks and balances on power, high levels of corruption from the start, and a case of 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss' - Lenin was a great 'hero of the revolution' but he was NOT cut from the same moral fabric as Washington, et al). There is also the fact that violent revolutions tend to depose the dictator only for the revolutionaries to just make themselves his replacement, instead of truly reforming the system and creating a new government as ours did.

So in the confused and chaotic mess that was Europe the last 200+ years, some nasty people came to power (Hitler, Massolini, Lenin, Stalin), sometimes overthrowing other nasty people (Russian Czars), other times overthrowing a weakened republic (Germany), and various other means. But after WWII and the defeat of the Axis Powers, coupled with the Marshal Plan, Europe and Russia have been slowly, sometimes haltingly, but still steadily towards greater freedom and away from tyranny and oppression. Europe is freerer now than it has ever been in its entire history, and there is no indication that it will be reverting any time soon. Russia still has many issues, yes, but they are far, far, far better than they were, and they're slowly getting better.

There is absolutely nothing inherently European about dictatorship, oppression, political prisoners, etc. Those are childhood diseases and ailments that humanity is slowly growing out of. We ourselves are just as guilty of holding political prisoners, forced relocations, death marches and even genocide as many European nations, from the Japanese internment camps in WWII, to slavery and racist lynch mobs, to the Trail of Tears. Our record is not much better than anyone else's, and is considerably worse in some cases. And don't forget, the U.S. itself is inherently European in its roots.

Ideally, government shouldn't be giving handouts to everyone, or steamrolling outcomes so that we are all equal in everything we have. What it SHOULD do is provide assistance to those who need it, and aggressively equalize opportunity, so that we all have the equal opportunity to make of our lives what we will, regardless of who we are or where we come from (part of the true American Dream).

Yes, this means helping the poor, the destitute, the impoverished; people who, without government aid and assistance, would have little or no real opportunity to improve their station and to make their lives, or the lives of their children, better. People who just have the dirty, rotten luck to have drawn the short straw almost every time. It also means requiring those who got excessively lucky, by birth or in opportunity, to repay that luck by shouldering a greater share of the burden of maintaining society and increasing the equality of opportunity, in proportion to their ability to shoulder it relative to the rest of society.

This is what we are required to do, and what our government is required to do, both by mandate of the Constitution, by pragmatic requirement (it best serves the most people), and by moral and ethical obligations (if we have plenty, but refuse to share what we can with those who have need, especially through no fault of their own, what kind of people are we?).