2013 Exposes Media’s Love of Activist Government Over Effective Government

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Mediate:

In early December, a year-end review of congressional productivity in 2013 uncovered a bleak truth: The 113th Congress is on pace to be one of the least productive national legislatures in American history.

 

The news spread across the media landscape like a brushfire with the commentariat entering a race to outdo one another in their disproportionate displays of revulsion over congressional inactivity. Few posited an objective reason for why having a relatively lethargic Congress was so terrible. Many in the press presented this revelation as self-evidently regrettable, feeling no pressure to justify this impression.

 

In fact, this prejudice within much of the establishment political press to welcome activist government for its own sake has characterized virtually every contentious issue that was publicly litigated over the course of 2013. From New Year’s Day until today, the political media has been pressing, agitating for the Congress to do “something” -– often for its own sake. The efficacy of that something was, in most cases, deemed irrelevant if only by virtue of how rarely the press even discussed the value of those various somethings.

 

On Saturday, the nation will mark the tragic anniversary of the unspeakable massacre of school children and teachers in Newtown. That atrocity sparked a push by Democratic legislators, liberal activists, and their allies in the press to pass new gun laws on the federal level. That push was, ultimately, unsuccessful. As it became clear that not even modest amendments to national gun laws would be passed by Congress, political commentators took turns rending garments over how gravely the legislature had abdicated its responsibility to provide for the public good.

 

But new gun laws did not fail in a vacuum. Those with even a modest concern for whether congressional actions are justified observed repeatedly that no new measure under consideration would have averted the tragedy in Connecticut and would be unlikely to prevent any future episode of mass gun violence. This empirically true observation was greeted with revulsion by supporters of activist government.

 

“We have to do something,” insisted legislators like Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). That something, regardless of its worth or practicality, was always the paramount goal. It was shared in the media. With the passions of the moment having cooled with time, some media outlets are willing to concede that none of the proposed new gun measures would have prevented another massacre. Many still accept, however, the moral supremacy of the emotionally charged argument that the government must act, even if that action is misguided.

________

 

Government knows best is the liberal mantra...