Has the tea party invaded Flint, Michigan? You might think so to hear some Flintstones—as the residents call themselves—talk about the failures of government.
National Public Radio ran a story in which some Flint citizens vented their frustration over how the government—local, state, and federal, including the Environmental Protection Agency—lied to and failed them.
That’s no surprise to conservatives and libertarians.
NPR quotes Roxanne Adair, a vendor at the local farmers market, saying, “So many of us here have lost faith and trust in what anyone has told us, because they told us that [the water] was safe to drink for two years when it clearly wasn’t.”
Would that be like, “if you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance”? Millions of Americans know from personal experience that President Obama misled them on Obamacare—and is still doing so.
NPR also quotes farmers market worker Sandra Westin: “But it makes me sad that the people we trusted failed us. It’s not us who failed them, they failed us.”
Would that be like thousands of American veterans trying to get health care from the VA and dying while on a waiting list? Those vets didn’t fail us; they served their country. Their country—that is, the government—failed them.
The NPR reporter mentioned that many Flint residents compare the drinking water scandal to the Tuskegee Experiment.
That took place back in 1932 when the U.S. Public Health Service wanted to see what syphilis would do to men over time. So it identified 400 poor black Tuskegee men with syphilis, and medical staff monitored without treating them for four decades. The experiment only stopped when a reporter exposed the tragedy.
The Tuskegee comparison with Flint highlights the point that the government can do terrible things—both intentionally and from gross negligence.
Of course, conservatives and libertarians—not to mention millions of independents—know how badly and how often the government fails, and we highlight those failures regularly.
That’s why we constantly push for a smaller, simpler, and expressly limited government—just like the Founding Fathers thought they were giving us with the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and specifically the Tenth Amendment.
But Democrats and liberals want a bigger, more intrusive government, one that can be all things to, and do all things for, all people. For example, Obama said in his first State of the Union address:
I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves; that says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity. For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas.
Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne described it as “Obama’s pitch for faith in government.”
Or how about Hillary Clinton, who traveled to Flint to demagogue those citizens:
Do not give up. The road is long and I know that there will be a lot of bumps along its way but this is the most important work we are ever called to do: to reach out in every way we can, no matter who we are, to lend that helping hand.
The city of Flint is heavily Democratic, voting almost two-to-one for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in 2012. And not coincidentally, it’s very poor, with a median income of $28,400—less than half the national average.
This is a city that votes for big-government politicians who promise the world but can’t even deliver safe water. Will they reconsider that pattern?
And Flintstones aren’t the only Democrats losing faith in government. The Pew Research Center says that only 29 percent of Democrats trust the government today.
And here’s the kicker: that’s only one percentage point better under Obama than the 28 percent of Democrats who trusted government under George W. Bush—and they hated him.
They used to say that a conservative was a liberal who got mugged the night before. The citizens of Flint have been mugged by their government; let’s see if that changes how they vote.