Once more there is the government conundrum. A conundrum is a riddle and is sometimes ensconced within a puzzle.  The party against big government is growing ever larger and is against the government culture in Washington, D.C. The Republicans have made a lot of friends by creating the illusion that they are friends of the people and enemies of officials who write and expand the institutions overseeing our lives. It certainly is a puzzle how this came to be.

The Democrats who once unabashedly proclaimed they were of and for the people were not afraid to create institutions that would provide food, housing and security.  They have silently given way to the special interests and have nowhere to go.  The next election will be fought on the prospects of the continued success of the Republican mantra that big government must go even while that government grows much larger. This is double-talk or new-speak where the rules are changed and the status quo challenged.

The idea of streamlining government goes back to the first days when the new institutions of a “Republic in a Democracy” were tried out.  From the first there was trouble. Well intentioned professional officials quickly learned what their real tasks were. “Pork barrels” and outright stealing became the norm. These officials often turned to lining their pockets with the tax moneys exacted from those who were supposed to be helped.  This is an old story. And this is why after many troublesome decades of abuse a civil-service reform was enacted. And this is why the idea of merit rather than cronyism and nepotism became the test of who sits on the opposite side of the desk where you or I sit wondering why it is taking so long. “Privatization” will, of course, cure this.

I think that the “Homeland Security” plan is a necessary reform but I don’t think that all the agencies that existed and will now be lumped into one with many of the old desks still operating in the same way will work as advertised. Won’t there still be the FBI and CIA - but this time abetted by millions of ordinary citizens watching and reporting on each other? We will have, instead of a big government, a bigger government and the merit system, a slow and cumbersome affair at any time, abandoned. This is especially true where self-righteous winners in a “landslide” of approval by a tiny percentage of voters have proclaimed they have a mandate to make serious changes in – government.

Our ever larger government will have to be expanded as we shift gears from peace-time to war time. We are not at peace while terrorist murderers are aided by those who proclaim to be our friends. And this war will be World War III; mark these words. The Afghan War, not yet over and soon forgotten, is a foretaste of what is to come. Our government will see to that.