Connecting the Dots

Government bureaucrats are incapable of doing anything right. That's why it's so shocking that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wasn't prevented from boarding a plane in Amsterdam, as he would've been if the Obama administration were competent, which just goes to show that government-run healthcare can't possibly work, the VA and Medicare notwithstanding, especially since the USPS sometimes misdelivers packages during the Christmas rush.

That, more or less, is the considered opinion of Star Parker. If you want to understand it, all you have to do is "connect the dots."

First, think about this: How can a government that didn't adequately inspect Abdulmutallab's underwear hope to offer adequate healthcare?

Despite extensive information on the would-be terrorist, each piece of which was incriminating on its own, the man evaded a vast government bureaucracy and almost blew up a plane filled with Americans.

Yet, Democrats, with the health care bill they are now piecing together behind closed doors, will bring all American lives and health care under the purview and control of government bureaucracy.

Talk about an inability to connect the dots.

Unfortunately, that's just how bureaucracy is. Unless we're talking about corporate bureaucracy, in which case we need to remember that nobody's perfect. Just as white conservative men who go on shooting sprees tell us nothing about white conservative culture, corporate bureaucrats who make fatal errors while toying imperiously with people's lives tell us nothing about corporate bureaucracy.

The plain fact is that government is hopelessly unreliable and untrustworthy, except when it comes to administering the death penalty, bombing foreign capitals, and regulating our sex lives. To deny this is to be an idealist of the worst sort.

Obama himself admits that the horrific act of violence Abdulmutallab (would've) committed (if he'd been able to) is "not the fault of a single individual or organization, but rather a systematic failure across organizations and agencies." Like the existential threat of taxation, this underscores the need for spontaneous collective action:

What saved the lives of innocent Americans were private citizens, using their own brains and initiative that acted to bring this terrorist down.

Think of the money and lives we'd save if we let airlines rent guns and Tasers to American air travelers, instead of relying on Interpol to protect them! And besides, who's gonna be better at screening airline passengers: a vast, dithering bureaucracy that's been corrupted by quotas and diversity training, or a spontaneously organized group of concerned citizens with an inbred skepticism of names like "Abdulmutallab"? I say we give obviously non-Islamic passengers access to metal detectors, specula, and bulletnosed flashlights, and let rational self-interest and the Wisdom of Crowds work their magic.

Parker goes on to report that during this past holiday season, a package she mailed went astray. Imagine that the USPS is the Obama administration, and the package is the physical well-being of your dimpled, golden-haired children, and you can see just how dangerous this error would be, if it actually were. And consider this: If you can't trust the government to deliver an autographed copy of Liberal Fascism to a centrist relative in Houston, how can you trust it with the health of your sigmoid colon? Connect the dots, people!

FedEx, by contrast, is a private company and never loses or misdelivers anything. Star Parker knows someone who heard this from his dentist, so that settles that.

None of which should be taken to imply that government is completely useless:

National security is a job of government.

We can only pray that these freedom-hating bean-counters will restrict their blinkered, incompetent, inefficient efforts to this fundamental task, before someone gets killed.

(Illustration via The Fed. Thanks to Abie for the reminder.)