The Root Of All Evil

(Why we should never trust big government)

This is not a religious essay. It is a treatise on ethics and, to some extent, morals. It is also a statement of facts about how misinterpretations, many inadvertent but most deliberate, can be the cause of destruction in today’s society. Destruction of personal values; destruction of family structure and destruction of societal ethos.

The saying “Money is the root of all evil” is the most often misinterpreted quote I know of.

The correct version is cited in the apostle Paul’s first letter to Timothy, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” It means, exactly what it says. Through the years, and even more in today’s society of highly divisive and intensive feelings, it has been and continues to be misinterpreted as meaning that money itself is evil and therefore, those who have money must be evil.

It is a fact that the disparity in distribution of wealth between the rich and poor is growing, not just in the United States but worldwide. It is also a fact, history proves it, that worldwide, the most socialistic economies are the ones with the most unequal distribution of wealth, so Capitalism, in and of itself is not the culprit.

Understanding economics can be intimidating. There are as many theories as there are economists. What is true, however, is that federal government is becoming the biggest influence on economics. The larger and more complicated the government gets, the more rules it creates, hindering business and society in general. The more rules it creates, the more it plays into the hands of the rich because they have the wherewithal to hire lawyers and lobbyists. The rich, because they can, take advantage of the opportunity offered to them.

Most rich people today are opportunists, i.e., when an opportunity is shown to them they take advantage of it. That may come in the shape of a tax deduction, loophole in business laws, gullibility of consumers, or the ability to hire lobbyists to convince (read bribe) elected federal officials into doing things or creating laws that will enhance their business interests but not those of the nation as a whole.

When money controls us, and the U.S. is a materialistic society, then we are controlled by whoever controls the money. Greed rather than need dominates.

Necessity is the mother of invention, a phrase most often attributed to Plato, means that the primary driving force for an invention is an unsatisfied need. When Big Government creates an unclimbable wall of rules and regulations, businesses, large and small, search for a way to climb the wall. They have a need! Unfortunately, the “invention” to resolve the need has been lobbyists.

For the sake of this discussion I will limit my remarks to the federal government. Each state is unique and to lump them all together would be unfair (a highly overused word today) but more important would not be accurate. Our country, the United States of America, is run by bureaucrats. The vast majority of these bureaucrats are ordinary people, going about their business, following the rules someone else made. However, the “management” of those bureaucrats, the upper level supervision, are not ordinary people. They are opiniated, divisive, petty bullies, driven by their own, often pecuniary, agendas. As a class, they care only about their self-perpetuation in their positions and the advancement of their personal agendas. In the case of rule-making agencies, the EPA, Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Labor, they believe their main purpose is to create as many rules as possible to ensure they will continue to have a job enforcing said rules.
The people who are supposed to keep an eye on these bureaucrats are our elected officials, Congress and the Senate. This is the classic example of the fox guarding the chicken coop. A good example of how Washington thinks follows.
A congressman and a senator from Vermont (Democrats) and from Utah (Republicans) sit down and discuss why they are two of only four states that do not allow gambling. The other two states are Tennessee (mostly republicans) and Hawaii (all Democrats). “Perhaps we should discuss this with our colleagues” Vermont proposes.
“Good idea,” Utah agrees. “Let’s plan a fact-finding trip to Tennessee.”
“Oh no,” interjects Vermont,” it’s winter. Let’s make it Hawaii.”
“Great,” answers Utah.

What is ignored by both states is the fact that the representatives of both Tennessee and Hawaii are sitting in the same chamber with them or are easily reached with a phone call for those too lazy to walk the length of the corridor to their counterpart’s office. It is ignored because everyone in Washington is inflicted with the same “We are special!” disease.

Remember that government, any government, has never created wealth. It takes what someone has created and disperses it, always in an inefficient and usually corrupt manner, to others. The single greatest mistake the average citizen can make is to assume that the “Government” is the cure for their problems. We are now at the stage where the “Government” is the cause of most of their problems.

Money is not the root of all evil. Money is simply a tool used by those prone to evil. Political egos run amok; insatiable desire for power; lack of morals; those are the roots of evil. When a plant is rotten, you don’t want it to spread the disease to others in the field. What do you do? You uproot the plant.

Let’s uproot the diseased plant. Now is the time to impose term limits! Now is the time to eliminate pensions for all elected federal officials! Now is the time to insist that elected federal officials have the same health coverage that the average citizen gets and nothing more.

If you want to clean up Washington, eliminate the things that entice ne’er-do-wells to run for office.

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