Big Gubmint, NGOs, and Vacation

Today’s entry from Mark Steyn surveys the incompetence and general fecklessness of big gubmint and the quasigovernmental NGOs, in terms to warm any libertarian’s heart.

One of the reasons I’m in favor of small government is because there’s hardly anything the government doesn’t do worse than anybody else who wants to give it a go. Usually when I make this observation, I’m thinking of, say, Britain’s late unlamented nationalized car industry. But when the government of a G7 nation can’t run a small marijuana sideline as well as a college student with a window box, that seems to set an entirely new standard for official underperformance. Big government goes to pot, in every sense.

. . .

[E]very do-gooding cause eventually floats free of whatever good it was trying to do and becomes a self-perpetuating business all of its own. The racism industry, for example, is now so large and lucrative and employs so many highly remunerated people from the Rev. Jesse Jackson down that it has a far greater interest than the Klu Klux Klan in maintaining racism.

. . .

The humanitarian touring circuit is now the oldest established permanent floating crap game. Regions such as West Africa, where there’s no pretense anything will ever get better, or the Balkans, which are maintained by the U.N. as the global equivalent of a slum housing project, suit the aid agencies perfectly: There’s never not a need for them. But in Iraq they’ve decided they’re not interested in staying to see the electric grid back up to capacity and the water system improved if it’s an American administration at the helm. The Big Consciences have made a political decision: that it’s not in their interest for the Bush crowd to succeed, and that calculation outweighs any concern they might have for the Iraqi people.

Nothing to argue with there, but go read the whole thing.

With that, I am off for a week or so to hunt for the noble mule deer in the wilds of southern Wyoming. Complete written report on my return.