[AKbear]

Today, the complex nature of life demands a highly complex government. Two examples. We have now all learned that large air planes can be turned into dangerous weapons. The only solution is government (which can either ban or regulate). Similarly, we are at the doorstep of tremendous breakthroughs in biology and health care. Plants that generate drugs, bacteria in place of pills, transplants of all kinds, etc. The list is endless and has endless possibilities for making life better. Only government can finance much of the research. And, only government can control what obviously needs to be controlled. For example, we need designer drugs, not designer anthrax.

This paragraph illustrates the whole problem with thinking in America today. There is a disconnect here that I, personally, don't understand. Lets take it one point at a time.

We have now all learned that large air planes can be turned into dangerous weapons. The only solution is government (which can either ban or regulate).

According to the logic here, the only solution is to ban airplanes. Airplanes are one of the most regulated products ever built anywhere. They are regulated as to to the standards of construction, distribution, purchase, operation, maintenance, and the whole of it's existance. The federal government regulates who may fly it, who may ride in it, who may own one, who may maintain it, who may load it, who may control it, who may paint it, etc. It is regulated to the point that there is not a single aspect of an airplane that doesn't have a government regulation or law about it. So, the only thing left is to ban it.

I don't think that is going to be an acceptable solution. Or is your thinking that the only problem is, the right people have not been doing the regulation?

Similarly, we are at the doorstep of tremendous breakthroughs in biology and health care. Plants that generate drugs, bacteria in place of pills, transplants of all kinds, etc. The list is endless and has endless possibilities for making life better. Only government can finance much of the research.

Horse feathers.

And, only government can control what obviously needs to be controlled. For example, we need designer drugs, not designer anthrax.

If you haven't heard, the designer anthrax was a government product. If you want truly useful drugs, get the government out of the drug regulation business. All the FDA has succeded in doing is slow down and make more expensive any progress in this area.

Government, in all cases with very, very few exceptions, is not the answer when you need something useful. There is not single government program that has ever produced a useful thing. Generally it has hindered progress, not helped it along.

[dirtboy]

Folks can debate as to whether we need a larger, more complex federal government in these times. However, the main problem I see is that our current larger, more complex federal government has become that way not by amending the Constitution and giving itself more powers through the consent of the states and the governed, but by simply seizing the powers, thereby eroding any checks and balances that a proper, Constitutional expansion of government could entail. Social Security is a prime example - one can argue that it is beneficial to society to create some kind of safety net for the elderly - but since the government simply established Social Security and then the SCOTUS was cowed by Roosevelt's court-packing scheme into finding Social Security consitutional under the General Welfare Clause, we now have a fraudulent, Ponzi-scheme of a federal retirement system instead of a system that meets some level of standards required for private retirement systems. Other examples abound of the dangers of expansion of federal power without amending the Constitution, and that is the key problem - not necessarily that fact that the federal government has grown, but the manner in which it has grown.