The prolific Thomas Woods has released a new book ? Rollback ? urging Americans to repeal ?big government before the coming fiscal collapse.?
Actually, only the final chapter focuses on the rollback. Woods advocates across-the-board federal budget cuts, measures to allow people to opt out of Social Security and Medicare, an end of the federal government?s currency monopoly, and other ideas for reducing the size and scope of government.
The rest of the book explains why the rollback is necessary. In one amusing passage, Woods asks people to substitute one of the left?s favorite whipping boys for the federal government in considering its proper role:
It is in part because we are so convinced of how indispensable government is, and how intractable some problems would be without its intervention, that even now so many people chafe at the idea of serious reductions in government revenue and power. They cannot abandon the thought that at some level it really does have the people?s interests at heart, and that things would be so much worse were its social footprint reduced or eliminated.
Imagine a world in which Walmart supplied people with the various services we today associate with government. Then suppose children in Walmart schools learned all about the wonders of Walmart, how it alone guarantees their safety, protects them from their own foolish decisions, guards them against the exploitation of non-Walmart corporations, and so on. Would we believe it? Or wouldn?t we know, Walmart?s propaganda notwithstanding, that in the absence of Walmart we probably wouldn?t be the heap of helpless boobs it says we?d be, and that we?d probably figure out some way to take care of the problems Walmart says only it can handle?
During a 2010 appearance at Campbell University, Woods explained to CarolinaJournal.tv that it?s unlikely the federal government will return to a proper role on its own.
