Reaganism's the Problem

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Ronald Reagan, as he became head of government for the mightiest nation on earth, famously proclaimed that "...government is the problem !"

(Yes, it hits me the same way...feel free to take a minute to switch off your logic-faculty...)

Reagan effected two evils simultaneously.

The first was to reverse the traditional American idea of “government:” that government is NOT “of the people, by the people, and for the people”...but rather an autonomous entity entirely separate from its citizens.

The second was to characterize “government” as ill-intentioned.

Reagan's followers consequently view government as inherently illegitimate (since it's not an expression of the will of “the people"); and all of government’s actions toward “the people” as evil.
 
That mindset puts Reaganites in oppostion to everything government does to “promote the general Welfare”...which the preamble to the constitution cites as one of government’s purposes.

In the traditional American view, our government's actions were “the people” acting collectively for their own wellbeing, and that of their fellow-citizens. Healthcare, protection from economic predators, meals-on-wheels, environmental regulation, minimum-wage laws, educational opportunity, public broadcasting, sane gun-laws, etc., etc., are GOOD for us all.  The Reagan doctrine is instead that such actions are “government over-reach,” attacks on individual "rights," and (horror-of-horrors !!) socialism.
 
What Reaganites miss, despite their pretenses to “Christian values,” is that their operative principle fundamentally contradicts God’s mandate to human rulers.  Reaganism rejects God’s command that government be “a minister of God for GOOD” (Romans 13).  (And doing so, Reaganism very much embodies the anti-government spirit that scripture calls "rebelliousness," or "lawlessness:" the innermost character of satan, and the essence of sin: I John 3:4).

Reaganites, only able to conceive of government as evil, are only able to practice governance of the kind they believe in.