Its Not Your Job...

I get ticked off when I hear people talking about doing things that, frankly, are not in their job description, particularly when the speaker happens to be elected, but also when they are busy-body citizens. Case in point, Dave Workman had an examiner article recently, entitled Story Reveals Deceptive Packaging of Gun Control in which this little gem occurred:

According to the Washington Post, MDAGSA founder Shannon Watts admitted to the newspaper earlier this week, “We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from stakeholders that ‘gun control’ isn’t the best term to use because it can be polarizing…We don’t want to be polarizing — we want to be a nonpartisan organization. We’re not about overturning the Second Amendment or banning guns, but we also don’t believe that we should arm every citizen.”

The emphasis is mine. I hear this all the time from hysterical anti-gunners who seem to believe that the Second Amendment seems to say that we, meaning society, should arm everyone, or give everyone an assault rifle at birth, or arm all the students, and so forth. You've probably heard them too. The Second Amendment does not force anyone to take any action whatsoever. It merely acknowledges a pre-existing right to keep and bear arms. Individuals can decide for themselves whether to exercise that right or not according to their own consciences. It is not Ms. Watts job to arm anyone.

Last night while watching Hannity, I noted that the boy mayor, and former Congressman from Cleveland, Ohio, Dennis Kucinich, made a comment that (paraphrasing here): We must get people working, and we must create jobs. The "we" of course, that Kucinich, as a lifetime career politician meant, were his former colleagues in Congress. No Mr. Kucinich, that is not your (or their) job.  Indeed, if you would stick to making laws within the framework of the Constitution and exercising the power of the purse, that is enough.  Let the private sector handle the job creating.

When the government takes money out of the economy to spend in targeted areas to "create jobs," what they create instead is an example of Bastiat's seen and unseen.  What is seen are the jobs created because the legislators toot the jobs in the press hoping to be looked upon favorably when the next election rolls around.  What is not seen is that the jobs created often cost several hundred thousand of dollars per job, such that it often seems that more could be accomplished by just passing out a check to each person who supposedly benefits from the largess.  What is also not seen are the opportunities lost because the money was taken, at the point of a gun no less, from taxpayers who would use it more wisely, as they earned it.

Society seems full today of busy-bodies.  Busy-bodies seem to find meaning in forcing others to acquiesce to their behavioural code and so petition government to force it on the rest of us benighted fools.  No salt in restaurants, no big gulp beverages, no supersized meals, no smoking, wear your seat belts or else, child seats until your children are 4 feet tall, and of course, no guns.  There's more, of course; the list goes on and on and on.  There also appears to be no shortage of petty tyrants who are anxious to get into Congress and start enacting laws for the rest of us.

Here's an idea, why don't you busy bodies and petty tyrants instead get an honest job and stop bugging us.  We survived all those years without you.