Good Intentions
More than 100 million Americans were projected to watch the Super Bowl yesterday. While millions tuned in to support the Chiefs or the Eagles, many Americans watched the game for other reasons.
In 2010, research found that 51 percent of Super Bowl viewers enjoyed the commercials more than the actual game, and a 2022 study reported that 40 percent watched the Super Bowl for the advertisements instead of the game. Just last year, another study also found that almost one in five viewers tuned in to the big game solely for the commercials.
Watching football with family and friends is not a bad thing – it’s actually a great thing. Yet, the big game’s varying attraction is a great reminder about the human condition. We must be careful of what we let into our lives – where we put our time, our money, and our energy. Even if we have the best of intentions, it is easy to get more than we bargained for. While you can start out any endeavor with a singular focus, one day you might find yourself trying to maintain a desert to preserve a grain of sand.
As it is with life, so it is with government.
If your guiding philosophy of governance simply relies on your intended result justifying your means to achieve it, then no objective is too great and no endeavor is too far beyond the scope of the state.
This truth is especially evident when it comes to government spending. Many on the Left have come unhinged thanks to President Trump’s focus on rooting out corruption, fraud, and waste in our federal government. While some of the progressive establishment’s ire is certainly linked to their deranged fascination with Trump, part of their unhinged reaction is related to their dependence on big government and their worship of the institution as the savior for all society.
The waste, fraud, and abuse in our federal bureaucracy that has been uncovered by President Trump and his DOGE team led by Elon Musk, should anger every reasonable taxpayer. Americans are now seeing firsthand that not only have countless government programs grown to spend tax dollars in wasteful and negligent ways, but these programs have been used to circumvent our electoral process to implement foreign, defense, and other policy initiatives that should be determined by their elected representatives.
The truth is that the defenders of these out-of-control programs often point to the original purpose of the initiatives. Objectively, most of the programs were designed with good intentions. However, if you lose sight of the role of government itself, it is easy to end up with a government that has no limitations on its scope at all. Sadly, that is a government that is likely inept at doing anything well at all – especially at accomplishing the limited job it was actually designed to do in the first place.
Our Constitution was crafted by the Framers to limit the power and scope of our government. Modern politicians should take note of these enumerated limits on government authority. However, reasonable people should be able to see for themselves, beyond constitutional arguments, that government only has a few things it can do well. Individuals, businesses, churches, and other non-governmental institutions can simply do most things better than government.
For this season, Americans should applaud leaders who seek to not only watch over taxpayer dollars, but who also wish to return power from the hands of government bureaucrats and return it to the people. While reform can be a painful process, I believe it is important to keep in mind that, in the long run, first principles are far more important than first intentions. As the old proverb states, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”