Government doesn’t make money; people make money.

The state has no conscience.

If you vest as much power as possible in the government while your party of choice is in power, please remember that this same power stays with the government when the party you dislike attains power.

The state has no conscience.

Judges, despite the black robes, are not priests, and therefore are not a conduit to God or, speaking atheistically, to some sort of abstract higher truth.  To the extent that they are almost impossible to remove from office, they, like government, should have limited powers.

The state has no conscience.

Everybody complains about government programs:  Social Security, the DMV, Medicare, City Hall, etc.  Given eons of experience with the inefficiency and propensity towards failure and corruption that characterizes government programs and government entities, why would you want to give these same programs and entitites more of your money to make them even bigger and more encroaching?

The state has no conscience.

Name me one country (socialist, theocratic, aristocratic, plutocratic, etc.) that has aggregated more power in the state than in the individual, but that still respected the rights of the individual.

The state has no conscience.

I bet you can quickly name me at least ten countries in which the system vested more power in the state than in the individual, and that quickly become a totalitarian dictatorship, destroying people inside and outside of its borders.

The state has no conscience.

Peculiarly, while all-powerful states are inefficient when it comes to generating wealth, providing health care, creating market innovation, controlling crime, etc., they are uniquely, ferociously and single-mindedly capable of destroying anyone or anything that threatens their power.  Joe the Plumber, who was attacked by the media arm of the coming “Progressive” state, is just a small example of what happens to anyone unlucky enough to make the government (or hoped-for government) look bad.

The state has no conscience.

My big push in the next two weeks is to keep the focus on the two parties’ differing visions of America.  It’s much easier to get a handle on the big picture, and avoids the mud-slinging associated with the personalities lined up behind these ideological views.  I’ve pointed out that, if you like big government, whether it’s supposedly benefitting you or actually burdening you, pick Obama/Biden, no matter the problems with those candidates.  Likewise, if you like smaller government (because, sadly, there is no small government), even though it means you get fewer benefits, go for McCain/Palin.

Jonah Goldberg (unsurprisingly) is also writing about these huge ideological divides — statism versus individualism, small government versus big government — divides that transcend personality.  His starting point is by-now-very-symbolic Joe the Plumber:

Wurzelbacher symbolizes an optimistic, individualistic vision of America sorely lacking — until recently — in McCain’s rhetoric.

Barack Obama, in contrast, has offered the most rhetorically eloquent defense of collectivism since Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his biographical video at the Democratic convention, he proclaimed that in America, “one person’s struggle is all of our struggles.” In his acceptance speech, he artfully replaced the idea of the American dream with the century-old progressive nostrum of “America’s promise.”

But the two visions are in opposition: the former individualistic, the latter collectivist. We each have our own idea of the American dream. Joe the Plumber’s is to own a small plumbing company; yours might be something else entirely. In America, that’s fine, because the pursuit of happiness is an individual, not a collective, right.

Obama’s “America’s promise,” meanwhile, harkens back a century to the writings of such progressives as Herbert Croly (author of The Promise of American Life), who demonized individualism while sanctifying collective action overseen by the state. Obama often articulates a vision of government inspired by the biblical injunction to be our brother’s keeper. Few would dispute the moral message, but many disagree that such religious imperatives are best translated into tax or economic policy. (Where are the separation-of-church-and-state fetishists when you need them?) But individualists haven’t had much of a voice in McCain, at least not until last week.

I’m sure you’ll want to read the rest, which you’ll find here.