Liberals intrigue me. For years, they have demanded that the government should be out of our bedrooms (when it comes to sexual behaviour, at least), but they advocate strongly for government control of our medicine cabinets and our minds. They place a pollyannish trust in the government to not abuse the extensive powers they would bestow on the government, despite empirical evidence that would indicate that every single government in history has abused its power.

In all fairness to the left, I must add that there is nothing sinister about the motives of most liberals I have known. In fact, the opposite is true. their intentions are almost completely altruistic. The problem is, these are a group that (collectively, this is not necessarily true of the individual) arrogantly feel as though they have all the answers, and that there is no room for debate because, of course, there is no validity to the opposing viewpoint. They reject the arguments of religious conservatives who demand, not that the government follow their equally narrowminded way of thinking (for the most part; I will readily concede the exceptions that will appear in the comments section), but that THEY be allowed to live consistent with their own beliefs in the confines of their homes and churches.

But the agenda of many on the left could have dangerous consequences. Think of the "Thalidomide babies" of the 1970's. Thalidomide was a widely prescribed medicine, and its side effects were horrendous birth defects that resulted occasionally from the ingestion of a single dose. Now imagine if we lived in a world where the government controlled medicine and Thalidomide had been MANDATORY for the conditions it was designed to treat. How much greater a cost would our society have paid for the numerous additional birth defects brought on by the zealous efforts of the government.

Or how about the chemical DDT? While it's detrimental effects are being debated, can you imagine if DDT spraying had been made MANDATORY? If homeowners were required to treat their yards with the substance to eradicate the mosquitoes? How much more pervasive would the damage have been, how many more animals would have died?

More recently we have been hit with the discovery of suicides linked to the use of certain anti-depressants in teenagers. How many more deaths, how many more Columbines, could have occured had we implemented a mandatory program of administration of these drugs based on a governmental psychiatric program that would naturally work against its own obsolescence by discovering "problems" where none exist (much as CPS often does in finding cases of "abuse" or "neglect" in perfectly stable homes).

The flaw in the liberals' line of thinking is that it is based on the concept that humans are, without exception, inherently good, and that a government will implement programs only designed for the best interests of its citizens. If a government program is proposed that seems to solve a problem, it is, of course, good, and any opposition to the program is unthinkable. While there's certainly a capacity for good in humans, it seems increasingly obvious to me that greed is the primary motivator of most humans, and that a government given too much power will be held captive to that greed as it looks for ways to increase revenue and to increase its power and control.

The government can, and will, make mistakes. It is composed of people and people are, by their very nature, imperfect. If the government is kept small, its mistakes can be minimized to affect as few people as possible. But the larger a government becomes, the more extensive its reach, the more people its mistakes have the potential to impact. A completely statist government has the potential to destroy an awful lot of people through its abuses of power. We need, therefore, to strictly limit how much power and authority we give our government. Or we may suffer some terrible consequences for failing to do so.