I was lurking around on YouTube when I stumbled across the latest vlogbrothers video "Why Does Congress Suck". (I won't link to it because I don't want to give them any traffic.) In this video he starts off by talking about how congress reached a compromise to avoid the fiscal cliff. I agree with him that congress is utterly ineffective, but he makes the mistake of saying that congress is ineffective because they aren't passing enough bills. We don't need more bills. The bills passed by congress only serve to harm the American people and the economy. How could he forget about SOPA? That was a bill too. So was CISPA.
He then goes on to talk about why the legislative branch is so bad at legislating. If you ask me, those power-hungry sociopaths shouldn't be doing any legislating at all, but that's another story. He then goes on to talk about gerrymandering. I agree that gerrymandering is one of the many, many reasons as to why the American government is completely broken, but again, that's another story.
He then talks about all the accomplishments he and his brother Hank made back in 2012. I congratulate them both on their accomplishments, but then he said something that boiled my blood and inspired me to write up this post: he said the only reason those things happened was because of government. Over the years I've noticed that government is just like god in that it takes all the credit for the good stuff that happens and none of the blame for the bad stuff that happens. "Oh no, it wasn't government intervention in the marketplace that caused the housing bubble, it was all the fault of those evil greedy capitalists!"
He then talks about Somalia and how much it sucks because they don't have government. What he doesn't realize is that Somalia didn't actually get rid of its state. Instead it simply broke apart into dozens of smaller states, each one vying for complete control of the area. The Somalian argument against no government has been debunked so many times, most smart statists don't even use it anymore.
At the end of the video, John makes this message: "Thank you, American government, for running well enough that I could make videos in my basement for nerdfighters!" If I were to replace the word government with god, I wouldn't change the meaning of that sentence at all. Let's remember that this is the same man who keeps going on and on about how great public schools are. He's obviously never watched the John Stossel special "Stupid in America".
John Green is a smart man. A very smart man. After all, he managed to write a bestselling book. However, he's still stupid enough to believe that the government is a kind, loving, omnipotent, beneficent parent who will take care of all of us.
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