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The Energizer Leviathan: Still Growing and Growing

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President Bill Clinton has repeatedly announced that "the era of big government is over." Many Republican congressmen have responded by laying down their ideological swords and pretending their work is done. But if freedom is to be revived in this country, Americans must begin paying less attention to the platitudes in politicians' speeches and more attention to the nasty details in Federal Register notices and new laws. Contemporary Americans face far more threats and abuses from government than did their forefathers — from the recycling police waiting to paw through their garbage, to the child-protective services lurking to grab their kids if no baby sitter is waiting for them after school, to the IRS scheming to ruin businessmen who have the temerity to deal with independent contractors, to local politicians dispensing cable television monopolies and forcing citizens to bankroll broadcasts of city council meetings 24 hours a day. Much of the starkest growth in government power since 1980 has occurred in ...

Mandatory Volunteerism: Were Orwell Alive, He’d Die of Laughter

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President Clinton has hitched his wagon to one of the most abominable ideas to come down the pike in some time: community service as part of the school curriculum. Is there a single proposal packed with more fallacies? I doubt it. Where to begin? In getting ready for a national service summit, the president said that "every young American should be taught the joy and the duty of serving, and should learn it at the moment when it will have the most enduring impact on the rest of their lives." Leaving aside the merit of that claim, we need to ask who should do the teaching. The duty of serving is a matter of morality, and that is the province of the family, not the schools. Parents typically want their children's schools to encourage virtue. But we have a problem when it comes to ...

Service to Whom? Part 1

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Part 1 | Part 2 Service has a long and venerable history in the United States. It has perhaps become a cliché, but Americans' generosity and penchant to organize to meet community needs were both noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic, Democracy in America. And so it continues today. Three-quarters of American households give to charity. Some 90 million adults volunteer; the value of their time has been estimated by Independent Sector to approach $200 billion. Volunteerism gains ever greater political appeal as the "age of politics," historian Paul Johnson's label for the 20th century, winds down. Today, even liberals are championing civil society. Herds of politicians now say that families and communities, not governments, hold the answer to America's social problems. Explains President Bill Clinton: "Much of the work of America cannot be done by government, much other work cannot be done by government alone. The solution must be the American people through voluntary service to others." ...