Halloween, more than an excuse to gorge on candy, is also an ideological celebration for conservatives. Right-wingers have developed an obsessive addiction to fear, whispering spooky tales of an Islamic takeover of the United States, gays buying wedding rings and immigrants requesting driver's licenses (in Spanish!). The most insidious threat, though, is homegrown: the federal government.
At his first inauguration, Ronald Reagan declared, "Government is not a solution to our problem - government is the problem." A decade later, Bill Clinton used a State of the Union address to echo the line, promising that "the era of big government is over."
Conservative reactionaries have long decried the heavy hand of government, protesting policies that emancipated the slaves, alleviated the Great Depression and demanded schools desegregate. Government has so metastasized, conservatives charge, it infiltrates every aspect of our lives. Luckily, they are right.
Three meals a day, government is there, setting health standards. Every commute I owe to government, whether I choose public transportation or drive on government-funded roads in a car that meets government-set safety regulations.
From surfing the Internet (a project developed by government) to visiting the dentist (licensed by government), from checking the Weather Channel to checking out a book, government makes middle-class U.S. life safer and easier than it would be without. One can hardly imagine life without it.
Actually, I can. George Bush may not have turned Iraq or Afghanistan into friendly vacation spots for U.S. tourists, but the region is a libertarian utopia. There is no government to regulate private vice as the opium trade flourishes. There is no government to deliver electricity or haul away sewage, either. And conservatives' greatest gift to Iraq? The regressive flat tax, which is only sporadically collected. Grover Norquist and his crowd should be flocking to Baghdad - no doubt they could drown its government in without too much effort.
Stateside, conservatives paint a haunting specter of a stifling bureaucracy exacting a crushing toll on taxpayers. But this argument doesn't work. In a democracy, government is, literally, us. Washington lawmakers are a motley assortment of businessmen and academics, family doctors and farmers. And backing them up are 1.7 million civil servants, according to Brookings, professionals dedicated to making sure our air is clean, gasoline pumps are accurate and veterans aren't dumped on the streets.
This tower of benefits must be propped up by taxes. But taxes, as Franklin Roosevelt said, are merely "the dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society." The problem isn't that taxes are too high. And it's not, as the public suspects, that taxes are squandered or spent on welfare or foreign aid - all of which combine to less than a nickel on every tax dollar, according to the General Accounting Office.
The problem is what anti-government conservatives do once they take over the government. Republicans, with their hollow what's-in-it-for-me attitude, fill critical positions with buddies (see Michael Brown, formerly of FEMA) or lobbyists. The Denver Post found 100 top Bush-appointed officials in charge of regulating industries they had previously worked or lobbied for. And electing Mark Foleys, Duke Cunninghams and Tom DeLays to Congress doesn't much help the profession.
But, ultimately, government is not the enemy. Too often, people confuse cynicism for wisdom, hoping that dissing government projects equals some real-world maturity. The truly astute, though, recognize just how fortunate we are to have government, and - in health care and higher education fields - hope to make it even bigger.
Jacob Shelly is a junior in the School of Public Affairs and a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
