Big Government Is No Victim

No tragedy is beyond exploitation by the left. When census worker Bill Sparkman was found dead and it was leaked that “Fed” was scrawled across his chest, the entirety of the conservative and Tea Party movements were immediately convicted by the online left. They were wrong, and we now know that Sparkman committed suicide. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the left also tried to hang Joseph Stack around the neck of the Tea Party. Again they failed.

They are now doing the same song and dance with Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell. Despite the fact that he’s a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther, the left and their media sycophants are stretching to tie him to the Tea Party movement, though the best that they can honestly come up with is that he distrusted government.

That’s what it really boils down to. At the end of the day, they know none of these guys will hold up as right-wingers. Their real objective is simply to shame anyone who thinks government should be smaller, rather than bigger. Anyone who thinks that the IRS is often used to bully Americans isn’t simply wrong, you see, but is also dangerous. Anyone who thinks that a limited government would better promote prosperity and ensure individual liberty isn’t merely antiquated, but also a potential shooter of government employees.

They are essentially trying to use the acts of these lone nutjobs – which were despicable in every way – to make big government into the victim. The magnitude of this Orwellian endeavor is so unbelievable that it’s hard to describe in a manner that doesn’t sound over-the-top. It’s better just to remind you of some of big government’s greatest hits.

The 2005 Kelo decision ruled that government can take property from one private person or group and give it to another in order to raise tax revenues. Such abuse didn’t just start with Kelo, however. In the 4 year period from 1998 to 2002, over 10,000 properties faced at least the threat of condemnation in order to benefit another private party, according to a report by the Institute for Justice. These are individuals being threatened and bullied by a massive government to give up their fundamental human right to administer their lawfully owned property as they see fit.

Despite the immediate backlash to Kelo, and the commendable efforts of many states to toughen their eminent domain protections, outrageous abuses continue to this day. One such fight is taking place in New York as the government pulls out all the stops to take away private property and hand it over to a collection of billionaires so that they can build a new, taxpayer-subsidized home for the New Jersey Nets.

Some citizens are fighting back and pledge to chain themselves to a popular bar to prevent its destruction. One courageous State Senator even pledged to lay down in front of the bulldozers. Does big government sound like a victim here? Does anyone honestly believe that the side with the bulldozers is an underdog?

Eminent domain is a frequent avenue by which government abuses its power, but it’s hardly the only one. The militarization of our domestic police forces, and the frequent deployment of SWAT teams to target nonviolent drug offenders, results in hundreds of raids on innocent targets every year, some of them resulting in death.

The raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Mayor Cheye Calvo helped bring to light the extent to which anyone can be a victim of these abuses. Unknown to Mayor Calvo, a package of marijuana was delivered to his home as part of a drug trafficking operation. The smugglers would ship the packages to random houses and then have a man on the inside – a deliveryman – intercept them before they reached their destination. Only this one was intercepted by police first.

They raided the Mayor’s home, shot and killed his two dogs, and proceeded to harass and terrorize his family for hours. After four hours he was finally able to convince them of his identity and they uncuffed him, but the lasting effects of brutal state tyranny would not be so easily removed. Long after the incident, the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s office continues to cover-up and lie about the incident, and refuses to admit any wrongdoing.

This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern of abusive state behavior. Such raids happen all the time across the country, but most other victims lack the stature and resources to fight back against an often oppressive state.

These are just two of the ways that big government victimizes people with little-to-no cause. And now the radical left and their enablers in the media want to use two high-profile, but uncommon incidents to invalidate all who question the power of the state. They want us to believe that the wolf is falling victim to the sheep.

The Founders understood that a small government to secure the rights of the people was preferable to anarchy. They also understood that such a government would quickly become the biggest threat to those rights, and so must be carefully limited. Now, it is those who seek to reapply those limits who are being berated by the supporters of big government, and whose ideas are being tarred as radical and dangerous. We must not let them lie about and exploit these high-profile crimes to cow us into submission.