Who stifles children?

In a brave act of trolling, Glen Morgan, the property rights director of the Freedom Foundation, posted a link to the webpage Stifle the little children onto the facebook page of the Washington State progressive caucus.

The webpage lists a dozen examples of government intrusion and misdeeds, via videos with interviews, background music, and other professional production values.

Like most right wing arguments, these are based on edge cases and on unrepresentative sampling.

Regressives (aka conservatives) cut food stamps and Head Start for poor children; awarded billions in subsidies, bailouts and tax breaks to gazillionaires; launched disastrous wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people and wasted trillions of dollars; and crashed the economy through reckless deregulation. Then they have the nerve to accuse progressives of stifling children!

I reject the idea that individuals and companies can prosper and be productive without the protections and framework of government. Aside from the need for regulations, government is needed to provide a framework of basic laws and services that can’t (apparently) be provided by individuals. It’s there to defend the common good. Government is like the operating system of a computer. And without government, we’d be hunter-gatherers.  Business needs government to produce goods and make money.  See:

Government is like a Computer Operating System

Anarchism, Libertarianism and the way forward

Countering anti-govt propaganda

A Broken Record: the case of the Freedom Foundation

Without Government We’d Still be Hunter-Gatherers

I propose we progressives make a webpage of our own with videos that illustrate the numerous ways in which government helps people and stops bad things from happening.

People who dislike government should move to Somalia.