Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 2, 1995 TAG: 9506030002
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HUGH KEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Gov. George Allen hasn't, to my knowledge, insulted any specific state employee. He has suggested that Virginia government is too big and too intrusive in citizens' lives, and that far fewer state employees can do all the state's business that should be done. Taxpayers believe that to be true.
The Camelot years of John F. Kennedy saw governments, at all levels, taking less than half the percentage of family income that tax collectors demand today. Taxpayers no longer believe that government programs are effective or efficient solutions to their problems.
It isn't ``the poor'' who are demonized for the deficit, but recipients of social services who made the national debt what it is today. If all annual outlays for social services went directly to those whom government defines as poor, each would receive income about 11/2 times the official poverty threshold. If the cost of government programs is included as real income to ``the poor,'' and I'm sure you know it's not included in statistics you use, there are far fewer poor and far less of a gap between the impoverished and productive rich who provide jobs for those willing to work.
If Legal Services Corp. spent its resources providing personal legal services to low-income people as originally intended, it wouldn't be under fire. LSC appears to concentrate on various class-action lawsuits that have less to do with legal service to the poor than with furthering liberals' social agendas. Yes, Jesus would have stood with private-property owners against those who would take it from them. He did, after all, throw lawyers and tax collectors out of the temple.
Classic Republicanism has not held that ``rough equality of conditions'' was necessary for survival of free institutions. Equal opportunity to enjoy the fruits of individual ability, energy and effort is the foundation for free institutions, and has been so recognized from Aristotle's times.
John Winthrop and other pilgrims, pursuing socialist governance of their brave new world, came close to mass starvation. Once they changed to a social system that rewarded effort and achievement, they managed to survive their new land's harsh conditions.
Public servants are obviously necessary to perform tasks that are truly public in a society like ours. The sneering is toward public employees who have forgotten that they are supposed to serve, not rule, the public in this great country. The sneering is aimed at public employees doing things rightly perceived as harmful to the liberty and property of citizens.
Restrict government to only those tasks it had as recently as JFK's era, scale it back to a size to efficiently accomplish those tasks, and approval ratings will reach unprecedented heights. The sneering will stop.
Hugh Key is a businessman and chairman of the Roanoke County Republican Party.
by CNB