Why we're a divided nation

[R.A. Hettinga]

This is one of the best arguments for minimal government I've heard. Like
most good arguments, it's blindingly simple.

Cheers,
RAH
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<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/printww20041110.shtml>

Townhall.com

Why we're a divided nation
Walter E. Williams (back to web version) | Send

November 10, 2004

Recent elections pointed to deepening divisions among American people, but
has anyone given serious thought to just why? I have part of the answer,
which starts off with a simple example.
 
Different Americans have different and intensive preferences for cars,
food, clothing and entertainment. For example, some Americans love opera
and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences, loving rock and
roll and hating opera. When's the last time you heard of rock-and-roll
lovers in conflict with opera lovers? It seldom, if ever, happens. Why?
Those who love operas get what they want, and those who love rock and roll
get what they want, and both can live in peace with one another.

  Suppose that instead of freedom in the music market, decisions on what
kind of music people could listen to were made in the political arena. It
would be either opera or rock and roll. Rock and rollers would be lined up
against opera lovers. Why? It's simple. If the opera lovers win, rock and
rollers would lose, and the reverse would happen if rock and rollers won.
Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political
arena.

  The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum
game. One person or group's gain is of necessity another person or group's
loss. As such, political allocation of resources is conflict enhancing
while market allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of
decisions made in the political arena, the greater is the potential for
conflict.

  There are other implications of political decision-making. Throughout
most of our history, we've lived in relative harmony. That's remarkable
because just about every religion, racial and ethnic group in the world is
represented in our country. These are the very racial/ethnic/religious
groups that have for centuries been trying to slaughter one another in
their home countries, among them: Turks and Armenians, Protestant and
Catholic, Muslim and Jew, Croats and Serbs. While we haven't been a perfect
nation, there have been no cases of the mass genocide and religious wars
that have plagued the globe elsewhere. The closest we've come was the
American Indian/European conflict, which pales by comparison.

  The reason we've been able to live in relative harmony is that for most
of our history government was small. There wasn't much pie to distribute
politically.

  When it's the political arena that determines who gets what goodies, the
most effective coalitions are those with a proven record of being the most
divisive -- those based on race, ethnicity, religion and region. As a
matter of fact, our most costly conflict involved a coalition based upon
region -- namely the War of 1861.

  Many of the issues that divide us, aside from the Iraq war, are those
best described as a zero-sum game, where one group's gain is of necessity
another's loss. Examples are: racial preferences, Social Security, tax
policy, trade restrictions, welfare and a host of other government policies
that benefit one American at the expense of another American. You might be
tempted to think that the brutal domestic conflict seen in other countries
at other times can't happen here. That's nonsense. Americans are not
super-humans; we possess the same frailties of other people in other
places. If there were a severe economic calamity, I can imagine a political
hustler exploiting those frailties here, just as Adolf Hitler did in
Germany, blaming it on the Jews, the blacks, the East Coast, Catholics or
free trade.

 The best thing the president and Congress can do to heal our country is to
reduce the impact of government on our lives. Doing so will not only
produce a less divided country and greater economic efficiency but bear
greater faith and allegiance to the vision of America held by our founders
-- a country of limited government.

-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'