Who’s afraid of a federal shutdown? Many of us hope for the real thing

By David McElroy · September 30, 2013

Unless some last-second deal emerges, the U.S. government will be shut down until squabbling Democrats and Republicans can reach a budget agreement. The media is filled with stories about how terrible this is. The Boston Globe even had an online headline that read, “US bracing for government shutdown no one wants.”

Are you scared of this terrible thing called a shutdown yet?

I’m ignoring my better judgment to comment on this, simply because almost anything you say about it is used as fodder by partisans of one side or the other as evidence that they’re right. But I’m not “with” either side on this.

I’m certainly not with the Democrats, who want to grow the size of government bigger and bigger and bigger, including funding the ObamaCare monster. But why would I support the Republicans, who are happy to vote for a monstrously huge government that’s almost as big, just as long as ObamaCare is delayed for a bit?

For years, Republicans have shown that they don’t oppose Big Government. They simply oppose making government quite as big as what Democrats want. And they certainly favor ever-increasing funding for the military-industrial complex that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about? (But who can trust Eisenhower? Those five-star generals are notorious peaceniks who don’t want to fund the military. Right?)

When the government “shuts down” tonight, very little will happen. Some offices, parks and museums will be closed, but the rest of the government will go right on functioning. (The Library of Congress website will shut down. That’s really saving money, huh?) We’re told that “non-essential” parts of the government will close, but I’ve always wanted to know why they exist as parts of the government if they’re not essential.

But what about the parts of government that I’d like to shut down? Those will go right on chugging along.

Will the military close down its foreign bases and quit fighting wars in other countries? Nope.

Will the Drug Enforcement Administration and various other agencies quit fighting the “war on (some) drugs”? No, they won’t.

Will we quit handing out billions of dollars in corporate welfare to various people and companies? Will the U.S. Department of Agriculture close? Will the U.S. Department of Education shut down and leave states to run their own schools? Will departments such as Commerce and Labor shut down and fire all their employees, leaving businesses and labor groups to deal with each other without their interference? Will the NSA quit snooping through our email and phone records? Will the IRS quit bugging people for money?

None of these things will happen.

I could go on and on. In other words, government isn’t really shutting down. Anyone who claims the government is shut down is lying or ignorant. No matter what the somber media might say — or what politicians piously intone — the government hasn’t shut down. It will keep right on operating — and doing the things that many of us don’t want done.

Every time there’s a “shutdown” of this sort, many conservatives are deliriously happy. Maybe they see it as meaningful or maybe they see it as symbolic. I’m not sure. As someone who’s opposed to the entire system, I don’t feel anything like that. I simply feel disappointed.

I’m disappointed that someone promises a shutdown that I know won’t happen in any meaningful way. I’m disappointed that so many people are so convinced that their lives would be fundamentally changed for the worse without the federal bureaucracy doing its thing. I’m disappointed that Republicans are the closest thing to allies I’m likely to have on the subject of reducing the size of government — and I know that they’re going to go along with some bad deal before long that will still increase the size over what it was last year. With alleged allies such as this, who needs enemies?

When the talking heads and the politicians start piously talking about how terrible it is that government is shutting down tonight, don’t believe them. Don’t believe that a shutdown would be bad. But even more fundamentally, don’t believe that a shutdown is happening.

You’re going to be told that the federal government is temporarily closed. Once again, you’re being lied to.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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