By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Social observers from Aristotle and Juvenal to James
Madison and George Orwell have all warned of the dangers of out-of-control
government. Lately, we have seen plenty of proof that they were frighteningly
correct.
The Environmental Protection Agency spilled 3 million
gallons of toxic sludge into a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado. The
stinky yellow flume of old mine waste — rife with cancer-causing mercury and
arsenic — threatens to pollute the drinking and recreational water of three
states.
Had a private oil company acted so incompetently and
negligently, it would have been fined billions of dollars by the same EPA. The
company’s top executives might have been subject to criminal prosecutions. The
business’s reputation would have been tarnished for years. Just ask BP
officials what the Obama administration did to the corporation after the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico.
But who will police the green police at the EPA?
When EPA administrator Gina McCarthy promises that the
agency will take “full responsibility,” what does that tired banality mean?
Will she resign? Will bureaucrats responsible for the toxic spill face fines
and jail sentences? Will residents be able to sue McCarthy and her subordinates
for diminishing their quality of life? Will the Sierra Club and the
Environmental Defense Fund rush to federal court to file briefs?
Consider the vast bureaucracy of U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement. Is it culpable for knowingly not enforcing immigration law
and thus allowing some undocumented immigrants to commit violent crimes?
In cases where innocent Americans are killed by
undocumented immigrants with long histories of felonies and deportations — such
as the recent killing of Kate Steinle in San Francisco — can the victims’
families sue ICE or sanctuary cities for either releasing or hosting criminals
who were residing in the U.S. illegally?
In our litigious society in which plaintiffs sue
fast-food franchises for serving excessively hot coffee, why do government
bureaucrats escape culpability when the innocent die or are injured as a result
of bureaucratic negligence?
When the IRS hounds citizens about their taxes, can
Americans inform the agency that they are invoking the Fifth Amendment and
refusing to answer out of fear of self-incrimination — and expect to face no
criminal consequences?
No? Why, then, was high-ranking IRS official Lois Lerner
able to sign off on the excessive scrutiny of some conservative nonprofit
groups, lie about it, and then invoke the Fifth — without any legal
consequences?
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton likely broke a
number of federal laws while secretary of state in using a private e-mail
server at her home to conduct both private and public business. One, she kept
documents containing classified information at an unauthorized location. Two,
she either destroyed or removed official communications entrusted to her as a
public servant. Three, she was legally responsible for the loss of information
involving national defense. Four, she likely destroyed documents to block
federal agencies’ examination of them.
So far, Clinton had escaped any consequences.
What is the common denominator in these government
scandals — as well as the recent scandals involving the needless deaths of
veterans waiting for care at Veterans’ Health Administration facilities, the
sex and booze escapades of Secret Service agents, the Las Vegas junketing at
the General Services Administration, the snooping at the National Security
Agency, and the lack of cyber-security at Office of Personnel Management?
The bigger that government gets, the more employees who
are hired, and the more unaccountable power that accrues to bureaucracies, the
more government takes on a life of its own. Public grandees resemble
Hollywood’s out-of-control androids or Frankenstein monsters that turn on their
creators — in these cases, us, the taxpayers.
Secure, high-level government administrative jobs — where
dismissal is rare and automatic promotion common — promote mediocrity.
Institutionalized incompetence explains why NASA can no longer launch its own
astronauts into space without help from Russia, or why the cost of the
California high-speed rail project soars before an inch of track is laid.
Clearly, Clinton and Lerner apparently assumed that as
federal officials, they were not subject to the same laws imposed on other
Americans. They reckoned that others in the fraternity of big government would
protect them from legal jeopardy. And they are probably right.
Under the Obama administration, there is also a more
disturbing trend: the equation of big government with social justice and
hostility to private enterprise. If the EPA and other federal agencies are felt
to be on the “right side” of fairness and equality, then why object when their
means to supposedly noble ends violate or neglect the law?
Big government has become the new Terminator, at war with
those who created it, who fund it — and who must obey it.
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