Domestic tranquillity is one of the major demands that the Constitution puts on government. Domestic tranquillity is so important that it sits in the preamble rather than as an article or amendment.
Bush’s decision to establish an Office of Homeland Defense to coordinate activity and information between the myriad of executive agencies in the Federal government. Unfortunately, history is against the success of the new office.
The official line is that agencies often have “overlapping” responsibilities and this office, led by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, will coordinate these overlapping responsibilities. One problem that Mr. Ridge will immediately discover is far more serious than mere overlap. He will find outright and unnecessary redundancy and inefficiency.
Ridge made a call for making the only “turf” to defend should be the “turf we stand on.” That statement assumes that people would interpret the location of their turf as that of their nation. Our government bureaucrats are too shallow and mission absorbed to think that deeply.
The fight over government “turf” is a result of a completely incompetent and short-sighted legislature commonly referred to as “Congress.” The goal of senators and representatives is to create pork and bring home the bacon so they can create useless jobs for their states and districts instead of focusing on what’s best for the country.
The self interest of politics is not the self interest of economics. Self interest in the political sphere will always come back to bite its maker. Roughly half of existing Federal agencies can probably be flushed down the toilet because they serve no purpose except the reelection of a particular Congressman or Senator.
If Bush is serious about creating efficient law enforcement, if Bush truly has no regard for “agency turf” and if the US government is serious about ensuing domestic tranquillity, then the people will be served by a significantly smaller Federal government.
