Rights and Bailouts

"If I knew for a certainly that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,-some of its virus mingled with my blood"

- Thoreau

As I consider the ultimate effects of our governments continuing bailout of various business interests in the country I am disheartened by a few facts. One, We have no idea what it will ultimately cost. Two, we have been convinced that is imminently necessary. Leaving aside the economic arguments for and against for a moment let us consider the ominous effects of ceding so much of our rights to the government. We Americans guard are right jealousy, in times of peace and prosperity no one can generally shake us from an understanding of what is our due as citizens. It is only in times of trouble, when the mass of people is frothing at some nameless fear, can the government, with all the best reasons, rapidly grow in size and potency. In the infancy of our Republic the threat of war with France gave us the Alien and Sedition Acts. Our Civil War brought about the rise of a grand bureaucracy, the draft, and the first income tax in the victorious North. World War I gave us a modern standing army and the Sedition Acts With the Great Depression, which the government  and prolonged through tariffs and interference, we saw an attempt to pack the Supreme Court and a massive expansion of Government power which brought us everything from redlining to the Farm bill. During this same period the crime wave that came with government enforced prohibition was used to justify the creation of the FBI headed by Mr. J. Edgar Hoover. This dreary list continues on to present day, and I would continue, but who wants to get a file started at Carnivore? The point is that the consequences of these programs and infringements generally far outstrip the urgency with which they were called for. What will be the consequences of large portions of the banking world remaining under government control?  (Some of these banks, it should be noted, accepted Government funding against their will.)  Who can say with any certainty? But mark well where the benign hand of our government flits and tarries in these days of panic.