Classical case for limited government

It began with Socrates and his pupil Plato, who, in that world-famous dialogue, "Republic," set out to discuss human excellence. In the process, Socrates used an analogy, the perfect or ideal society. It was easier to study than the individual human soul. (We do this when studying chemistry, for example, and we use plastic balls to stand in for atoms and other tiny entities we cannot study directly.)

One point Socrates is supposed to have made, according to Plato, is that this ideal society they sketched out wasn't meant to be some blueprint for people to try to implement. It was more like a model and was supposed to play the same role, as a means to emphasize what's important to keep in mind as one thinks about politics. For example, while Socrates spoke of a philosopher-king, that was to stress the importance of human reason in forging policy, not the need for some actual superperson: a king.

But that point has been widely misunderstood for centuries - and, indeed, there is some ambiguity in the dialogue, so disputes about it are to be expected. Too many folks have taken Socrates and Plato to mean that we all should strive to implement an ideal society. Since, however, their actual purpose was to sketch how human beings should live and what should guide their conduct - namely, careful advance thought - the numerous attempts to implement the ideal society had to fail.

Indeed, some very sophisticated students of Plato's works defend the position that the main teaching of Plato's "Republic" is that politics can have only a limited function in making life good. What people need to do is to direct themselves - their own lives and those of their fellows who consult them - thoughtfully and not wait for some king or government to figure things out. The capacity of politics to do good is very minimal in this approach.
If this, indeed, is the teaching of Socrates and Plato, it oddly anticipates the teaching of the American founders.

Those men also believed that human happiness or success in life must be an individual and social feat but not primarily or even mainly political. That is why they wrote that government's role is only to secure our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of our happiness.

This lesson has been rejected by too many people since time immemorial; they keep seeking total salvation through politics. We are back to this again with the leadership of President Barack Obama. He apparently shares the ideas of the New Republic magazine's columnist Leon Wieseltier, who recently wrote that "contrary to what [Americans] have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government."

Such thinking is extremely hazardous. It exemplifies the valuable but often forgotten cliche, "The perfect is the enemy of the good," and shares tendencies in politics with the efforts of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and others throughout history who wanted to implement their version of a prefect plan.

By aiming to do everything for us, by pretending to have the answers. Mr. Obama is facilitating the ruin of the great project of the founders, as well as of Socrates and Plato, namely, to restrain oneself when assigning tasks to governments, to bureaucrats, to politicians and to all their eager-beaver helpers at prestigious universities and publications.

Not unless we return to heeding the teachings of those folks who knew how limited is the capacity of politics for improving human life will we have a good chance at a decent life and decent society.