New Post by Prof Edelson on Huffington Post: The Shutdown and the Case for Federal Government

Check out this latest blog on Huffington Post.  An excerpt: “Republicans are establishing an identity as the anti-government party, as one business leader recently put it. This calls to mind Ronald Reagan’s famous declaration that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” President Reagan was talking specifically about the economy, but his assertion has been applied more and more broadly by his political heirs. The anti-government crowd has a point: too much government can be a problem and it can be dangerous. There can be waste, mismanagement, even oppressiveness in government. But they are missing another point. While it can be dangerous for government to be too large or have too much power, it can also be dangerous when government does not have enough power. The Framers of the Constitution understood this problem all too well. The Articles of Confederation failed because it did not give the federal government enough power to deal with national problems. American revolutionaries, having taken up arms against an overbearing central government, worried about giving government too much power. But they overlooked the danger of going too far and creating a federal government that was dangerously weak. As a consequence, the Constitution was designed to balance two competing concerns: limiting the power of government while also making sure the federal government had enough power to deal with national problems. Today’s anti-government Republicans are ignoring the second part of the equation. It’s time to remind them that there is a reason why we have a federal government.”