Gutfeld: We are witnessing a 'collapse in trust of big government'

Tuesday, June 18, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: big government, IRS scandal, public trust

(NaturalNews) To hear Fox News host and author Greg Gutfeld tell it, Americans are quickly losing faith "in trust of big government," but then again, if you ask me, I'd say it's about time.

In a May 31 column posted over at Breitbart News, Gutfeld prefaced his observation thus:

You remember near the end of the Monty Python flick, The Meaning of Life - that scene featuring Mr. Creasote? He's the morbidly obese freak who gorges on food, until finally, after eating a mint offered by the waiter, completely explodes, sending his guts in all directions.

I was a senior in high school when I saw it, and I remember it clearly. I skipped dinner that night.

And I remember the scene now, as I've watched this IRS scandal unfold. I keep thinking about that mint, and that this scandal is that mint.

So much bureaucracy, so many scandals

Of course Gutfeld is talking about the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups that had applied for tax-exempt status in the years heading into the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. And, of course, there are so many more scandals swirling within the Obama Administration than just the IRS. But that scandal, more than any of the others involving Benghazi, Operation Fast and Furious and the Justice Department, is more important, he notes, simply because the IRS is literally in the face of every single American every single year. And it is the one scandal that most accurately depicts Big Government gone horribly awry.

Per Gutfeld:

With this exposed plan of intimidation, big government has finally, irrevocably exploded all over us - drenching us in its own corrupt excesses. It's gotten so fat, so immensely greedy, so impossibly grotesque, that the only thing that can end it is itself. ... What we are witnessing is a collapse of trust in big government, which ultimately - to our benefit as small-government types - leads to a permanent undermining of the whole system. ... The IRS scandal, if perceived correctly, spells the end of big government.

He is, of course, talking about what lawyer, former Reagan Administration official, author and talk show host Mark Levin has often referred to, and that's the Fourth Branch of government - the so-called Administrative Branch. It consists of all of the bureaucracies (like the IRS, EPA, HHS, et al) that fall under the purview and control of the Executive Branch and, by default, the presidency. It is not a system created by our founders and outlined in the U.S. Constitution, but one created out of whole cloth by congresses past and present that, through their regulatory authority, literally have the power to make law.

Members of the Legislative Branch - Congress - often behave as if there is nothing lawmakers can do to blunt this presidentially-controlled leviathan, but that is simply false. Congress has the authority to control this out-of-control Administrative Branch simply by voting to cut off funding for each of its bureaucracies. Without funding, these bureaucracies simply cease to function.

Ultimately, Congress is responsible for the creation of so much bureaucracy

Why hasn't Congress done this? Because each party wants its president to have just as much authority as possible when they control the White House. Hence, the Administrative Branch has been allowed to proliferate, despite its growing hostility towards, and poor treatment of, the very taxpayers who pay for its existence (and who vote for those same members of Congress).

But wait, you say. Don't federal courts uphold the regulations issued by the Administrative Branch? Generally speaking, yes - federal courts certainly do enable the bureaucracies. But the bureaucracies were created constitutionally; they were established through laws passed by the Legislative Branch. So if they were legally created and given regulatory authority, why wouldn't federal courts generally uphold the rules they issue?

Again, the problem of Big Government and, more specifically, how to pare it back, falls to the Legislative Branch. Will they respond? That's up to us, as Gutfeld notes.

"The IRS just dug big government's grave. America now has the opportunity to look at the greedy monster that is expansive, progressive government and say, 'We are done with you. Go away'," he writes.

But will we? The restoration of personal freedom and liberty - the right to be an individual, as our founders envisioned - is at stake.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.breitbart.com

http://therightscoop.com

http://www.marklevinshow.com/