President Biden’s Speech to Congress was not well received.

President Biden’s Speech to Congress was not well received. by The Elephant's Child

April 30, 2021, 9:12 pm
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Big Government., Creating Jobs, Proper role of Government

President Biden’s speech to Congress was not well received by the general public, in spite of his promises that he was going to have a job for everybody. Democrats seem to believe that full employment is created by government action and government promises, but the people mostly know better. Democrats believe in a powerful central government that does everything, and Republicans are apt to believe just the opposite, that a big powerful government is a major problem, and keeping government interference to a minimum is the correct goal.

Our founders came from countries with powerful governments, and that was just what they wanted to escape in coming to a new world. They tried hard to create a new kind of government that responded to the needs of the people rather than directing the people in how to support a rich and powerful government. They wanted to leave the people free to create their own lives, and tried to design a government that would help them to do that, rather than training them in how to support the government. That’s the origin of America’s free enterprise economy, and we are blessed because of it.

The big and prosperous businesses of America often began with a single person with an idea. The genius of the American founding was the recognition of that fact, and the idea and the desire to help it to happen and prosper.

Here are a couple of familiar examples of people who did just that: Jeff Bezos and his wife famously loaded up the trunk of their car with books, and set out. We had some mail order catalogs at the time, so just how his ideas developed into Amazon, and made him a billionaire is not clear. Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward died. Of course the Covid crisis helped, when people where locked up at home and had to depend on Amazon and delivery services to get by, but Amazon clearly would have succeeded anyway, and did.

Mike Lindell had an idea of a way to make a better bed pillow. and made a great success of it. His success, of course is not so much celebrated because he was a big Trump supporter, but it is nevertheless a good example of Americans taking an idea of their own and turning it into a successful business. There are, of course, hundreds and hundreds of small businesses across the country that just putter along, struggling to survive. That’s how America grew and became a big and powerful country. We came from other countries with other kinds of governments, and our founders weren’t a bunch of control freaks. They had come to a new land and rejected the rule of kings that they had left behind, and they wanted something different Lots of struggles and mishaps along the way, but it has turned out pretty well.

There have always been those who believe that it is the government that makes things happen, and those who believe that one of our major problems is too much government. That seems to end up with one political party deeply in love with the functions of government, and the other that sees too much government as a major problem. That’s how the parties line up. President Biden is thinking in terms of what the government should do for the people, rather than how the government can support the people in their own goals and beliefs. There is a major difference.

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