The Bigger the Government, the Less You Are Needed

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By Dennis Prager (Archive) · Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Among the things left and right, religious and secular, agree on is that one of the few real needs human beings have is to be needed.

When we are not needed, life feels pointless.

The need to be needed is universal. Men need it; women need it. The sexes may feel needed in different ways, but the depth of the need is the same. Many women feel particularly alive when needed by their young children; many men feel worthy when needed by their family and/or their work. That is why most women navigate difficult emotional straits when their adult children leave home and assume independent lives, and why most men find it so crushing to lose their job -- not necessarily because of loss of income, but because of the loss of meaning that comes from no longer being needed.

Only when we are needed do we believe we have significance. Give a boy a special task -- just about any task -- and he blossoms. Give a girl a person -- in fact, almost any living being -- who depends on her, and she blossoms.

Of course, there are also myriad unhealthy ways of feeling needed. If an unwed teenage girl has a baby in order to feel needed, it is usually a bad thing for her, for the child and for society. If a boy joins a gang to feel needed/significant, it is bad for him and society.

Though not consciously intending to, over time, the left destroys people's ability to be needed and, therefore, to be or feel significant.

As I regularly note, the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. One can add: The bigger the government, the less significant the citizen -- especially men.

This is easy to explain because it is definitional. The more the state does, the less its citizens are needed to do. One well-known example is the way welfare robbed so many men of significance when women and their children came to depend financially on the state.

And it goes further than that. In order to feel significant, men not only need to have others depend on them, they also need to depend on themselves, on their own work and initiative. But that, too, is destroyed as the state gets bigger. Fewer and fewer people work for themselves (which leads to, among other things, the disappearance of that quintessentially American ideal of the risk-taking entrepreneur).

It gets worse. As being needed and significant shifts from the individual to the state, the state increasingly determines who is needed and who has significance.

That means, first of all, politicians. Obviously, whoever controls the ever-expanding government has the most significance in a society.

Another significant group in the leftist state are media people. They are significant in a non-leftist state such as America, as well. But there is a huge difference. Since American media are largely independent of government, there are a far greater number of significant media people in America than in the much smaller world of consolidated state media in Europe or Latin America. There is nothing like the BBC or French Radio and Television in the United States. Therefore, no one in American media is nearly as powerful as are the heads of the BBC or RTF. So the American state cannot anoint who is significant in media.

Another significant group in the leftist state is intellectuals. They, too, are largely determined by the state, which funds nearly all education and intellectual life. One reason intellectuals in America and Europe are so often estranged from American culture is that intellectuals have rarely had the fame or significance here that they have had in Europe. There are no American intellectuals who have had the celebrity or influence that Jean-Paul Sartre did in France, for example.

So, too, artists take on greater prominence as the leftwing state grows. And they, too, are funded and celebrated by the state.

In the ever-expanding state that the left creates, the vast majority of individuals lose significance in that they are simply less needed as the state takes over many of their roles. Fifty years ago, the men of the local Rotary Club had prestige and societal significance. So did fathers. So did clergy. With the ascendance of the left and the expansion of their state, much of their power and societal significance has eroded.

Now, as the state expands further into health care, the same will happen to doctors as power and prestige are transferred from them to the heads of dozens of new government health regulatory agencies. Over time, neither you nor your doctor will fully decide your treatment.

Indeed, over time, if the left has its way and the state keeps expanding, you will also not decide what temperature to keep your house or how to get to work. Nor will you be needed to educate your children (that is already the job of the state, and much of Europe now bans home schooling), or to raise and discipline your children (the state will ensure you are doing it correctly, and spanking is now illegal in 25 countries). Fathers will be needed primarily (and after divorce, only) as providers of child and spousal support.

In short, you will be needed essentially for one thing: to finance the one thing that is truly needed -- the state.

Third-party content does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Patriot Post.

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David L

The more we rely on Government the less free will we have and the less rights we have. We are being told what to do and when to do it, what is healthy for us and what is safe for us and what is not. We as people come with a brain and instinct that tells us what is safe and not, and if we do not follow that instinct then we have to pay the consequences. It is not the Governments job to tell us things that common sense should tell us,for example, to wear a seatbelt in a car. That is common sense and if we don't use it then we are responsible for any consequenses that may happen. As a father it is my responsiblity to raise my children with the ethics that I believe in. Yet the government continues to try to take that away from me through the school system,by teaching them things that can better be taught at home, like sex education or financial responsiblity. We need to get rid of this entitlement frame of mind, where we believe that everything should be handed to us, and get back to the basic work hard and earn it frame of mind that our country was founded on.

Posted March 16, 2010 at 9:37:41 AM

MichaelSSEC

Bravo, Mr Prager! If anything this column is overly optimistic as it suggests America is avoiding the Leftist scourge, but it's not so. We're most of the way there already and if the current administration has its way, America will spend the next three years lurching sharply to the Left of France.

OTOH, the past year has given us reason for optimism. Who would have guessed this time last year that millions of ordinary Americans would rise up and flatly reject the Socialist programs being pushed by the new President? Who would have guessed that regular Americans would rebuke the Messiah so firmly? It's cause for celebration. Liberty is alive and well in the hearts of a majority of Americans, who have not forgotten what it MEANS to be American!

To be needed. To prove oneself worthy of self-respect. To take one's destiny into one's own hands. These rank right up with food, clothing and shelter as fundamental human needs, yet in promising the latter, the State strips us of the former -- and cannot even make good its promises for stripping away the impulse to achieve, the State also kills the willingness to strive, and that is the death of prosperity.

When people feel they do not matter, they become discontent no matter how many material needs the State meets or how well it meets them. People begin to feel entitled to greater and greater needs, which can never be satisfied, and dissatisfaction rises. We've seen it again and again in Socialist countries. Has there been a year in France that did not see some sort of labor strike or riots?

Why would any self-respecting American wish to emulate that chronic failure here?

Posted March 16, 2010 at 10:52:44 AM

Marcus

In the sixth grade, our teacher told us that the definition of a snob is: a person who is educated beyond their intelligence.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are dealing with, and have been dealing with for 100 years now. We don't have "intellectual elite". We have snobs, plain and simple. The best evidence is laid bare before us with how badly they screw things up.

Anybody who had ever worked for one of these folks, including members of the much beloved frat boy crowd, knows what I am talking about.

We don't exist in a society that promotes or elects based on merit. It is only by association. We do this because as a society we are quite ignorant of the ramifications, until the snobby beast we released turns and bites us on our collective seat of understanding. that liberal beast is just growling at us at this point. if the drooling, snarling left gets its way and we get bitten, I only hope that we have the gumption to finally kill this beast once and for all and restore The United States of America.

obamanation is right on one thing; the time for discussion is over. we have heard their words and they make no sense to real men. it is time for men to rise up and take charge of their lives and homes and families.

failing that, we are doomed.

Mr. Prager, your words are true and good.

Posted March 16, 2010 at 12:56:05 PM

TJS

The leftists have what Hayek called the "fatal conceit" that they have superior knowledge than the people and the free market. They don't know what you think, they don't care what you want, and if they did know they would disdain it.

Posted March 16, 2010 at 1:28:33 PM

PDeverit

People used to think it was necessary to "spank" adult members of the community, military trainees, and prisoners. In some countries they still do. In our country, it is considered sexual battery if a person over the age of 18 is "spanked", but only if over the age of 18.

For one thing, because the buttocks are so close to the genitals and so multiply linked to sexual nerve centers, striking them can trigger powerful and involuntary sexual stimulus in some people. There are numerous physiological ways in which it can be sexually abusive, but I won't list them all here. One can use the resources I've posted if they want to learn more. All materials listed may be accessed at the website of Parents and Teachers Against Violence In Education at www.nospank.net.

Child buttock-battering vs. DISCIPLINE:

Child buttock-battering (euphemistically labeled "spanking","swatting","switching","smacking", "paddling",or other cute-sounding names) for the purpose of gaining compliance is nothing more than an inherited bad habit.

Its a good idea for people to take a look at what they are doing, and learn how to DISCIPLINE instead of hit.

I think the reason why television shows like "Supernanny" and "Dr. Phil" are so popular is because that is precisely what many (not all) people are trying to do.

There are several reasons why child bottom-slapping isn't a good idea. Here are some good, quick reads recommended by professionals:

Plain Talk About Spanking

by Jordan Riak,

The Sexual Dangers of Spanking Children

by Tom Johnson,

NO VITAL ORGANS THERE, So They Say

by Lesli Taylor M.D. and Adah Maurer Ph.D.

Most compelling of all reasons to abandon this worst of all bad habits is the fact that buttock-battering can be unintentional sexual abuse for some children. There is an abundance of educational resources, testimony, documentation, etc available on the subject that can easily be found by doing a little research with the recommended reads-visit the website of Parents and Teachers Against Violence In Education at www.nospank.net.

Just a handful of those helping to raise awareness of why child bottom-slapping isn't a good idea:

American Academy of Pediatrics,

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,

American Psychological Association,

Center For Effective Discipline,

Churches' Network For Non-Violence,

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu,

Parenting In Jesus' Footsteps,

Global Initiative To End All Corporal Punishment of Children,

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In 26 countries, child corporal punishment is prohibited by law (with more in process). In fact, the US was the only UN member that did not ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Posted March 18, 2010 at 1:04:04 PM

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