That government governs best which governs least: reflections on the necessity of government.(Georgetown University Professor James V. Schall)(Transcript)

The familiar phrase, "that government governs best which governs least," is one that I have cited from memory all y life. It does not deny that government should govern, that it has a necessary purpose, but it does suggest that it can govern too much. No one, I think, would readily assent to the proposition, "that government governs best that governs most." A totalitarian government is one that claims to govern everything and everyone, body and soul. Usually it makes this claim in the name of the good of all. I forget now the source of this catchy "governing least" quotation. I am rather sure it is from Jefferson, but it could be from Locke or a number of other sources, but no matter.

I have The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, usually a goldmine of such information. I was sure to find the reference there, but lo, it was not to be found. I did, however, find, as something similar, the following lines from Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, a gentleman I confess to never having heard of before, from a poem of his called, improbably, "The President and the Board of Trade":

Well, fancy giving money to the Government!

Might as well have put it down the drain!

Fancy giving money to the Government!

Nobody will see the stuff again! ...

I've heard a lot of silly things, but Lor'!

Fancy giving money to the Government!

We never quite "give" money to the government, of course, even in our fancies. It is usually "taken" under some duress from the tax codes, or at least grudgingly paid, in sums we cannot imagine could be justified. We never question that much tax money does "go down the drain." We take for granted that we "will never see the stuff again." If it is true that a rich man will enter the kingdom of heaven only with the comparative difficulty of a camel entering the eye of a needle, we console ourselves that the tax burden, in its arcane workings, will save us, against our wills, to be sure, from this dire fate of being overly rich.

No doubt in any political circumstance, taxing powers have their problems. The story is told of a teacher from a city school visiting her little nephew, who was a student in a country school. Wanting to see if the child's education was up to par, she asks him the following question: "If a farmer has five thousand bushels of wheat, and the wheat is worth three dollars and eleven cents a bushel, what will he get?" "A government loan," the nephew promptly replies.

The idea behind this amusing story, of course, already clear to the little rural nephew, is that the farmer is entitled to a certain level of income, whatever the market price of wheat. The cost of the wheat, therefore, is a partly subsidized cost. The consumer has to pay more because of this subvention. That is, he is taxed both to pay indirectly for the increased price of bread and for the subsidy to the farmer garnered somehow through another avenue of the taxing process. If the best things in life are free, none of the things pertaining to the government, including liberty itself, are without cost.

No entitlement is without expense to someone somewhere, an expense generally supplied through a taxing power that redistributes collected income on the basis of some presumed social good. Yet, …