Steve Hochstadt: Whom Do You Trust?
[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier and is available and on his blog at stevehochstadt.blogspot.com.]
Lately we have been hearing how awful government is. Not governments like Iran or North Korea, not Communists or military dictatorships, but our own government.
I find this ironic, since I am now teaching a course about the 1960s, when people who criticized our government were told “love it or leave it.” Now the defenders of government are told they are un-American. It’s so confusing when political groups change their slogans into the opposite, and act like nothing has happened.
Those who want government to go away, or at least get a lot smaller, seem to have two ideas about how to shrink government: Cut out the “waste” and let private companies take over many of its functions. Their assumption is that the private sector can do these jobs better and cheaper. Is that true?...
Read entire article at Jacksonville Journal-Courier
Lately we have been hearing how awful government is. Not governments like Iran or North Korea, not Communists or military dictatorships, but our own government.
I find this ironic, since I am now teaching a course about the 1960s, when people who criticized our government were told “love it or leave it.” Now the defenders of government are told they are un-American. It’s so confusing when political groups change their slogans into the opposite, and act like nothing has happened.
Those who want government to go away, or at least get a lot smaller, seem to have two ideas about how to shrink government: Cut out the “waste” and let private companies take over many of its functions. Their assumption is that the private sector can do these jobs better and cheaper. Is that true?...