When Government is Small Enough

We've heard a lot about the conservatives' drive to cut government spending, and functions. Famously Grover Norquist said that his aim was to make government small enough that he could "drown it in a bathtub."

In other words, the ideal was no government at all. It's an interesting idea, especially since we see examples of it in various places around the world.

Somalia, for example. In Somalia, there is a government, but its writ is extremely limited even in the capital city of Mogadishu. Nevertheless, the US and the UN are supporting it--even though it has been caught using child soldiers in its national army. But there is virtually no security, except in some of the rebel-held areas, where strict, extremely brutal "sharia" law is arbitrarily enforced. If someone is starving, and he grabs a loaf of bread, having no money--there is no viable currency--he could have a hand and foot hacked off by al Shabaab, a fundamentalist insurgent group.

So, if you travel in Somalia, you need at least a couple of bodyguards, armed (at least) with AK47's. If you want to send a letter out of the country, you're out of luck. If you're near one of the local businessmen-warlords, who has a local private mail service, you might be able to send a letter within parts of Somalia.

If you want to send your children to school, in most of the country you'll just have to forget about it. One of the reasons for Somali piracy is that there is no security for the nation's fishing areas, so the international fishing industry has moved in, and the Somalis make a living by commandeering unprotected shipping. It's become a big business.

Nations without governance for large parts of their territories are vulnerable to freelance armies like the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), which bills itself as a rebellion to replace Uganda's government with a Christian theocracy, but ranges over four nations, killing, raping, looting, and recruiting boys to fight and girls as sex slaves. The LRA reminds me of the worst aspects of medieval freelance armies: it really isn't interested in holding territory, simply in maintaining (and enriching) itself. It has ranged free for years, because northern Uganda, southern Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo have large territories without government control. The LRA is like Attila's Huns.

The Congo has also been vulnerable, especially its eastern territories, to the same kind of freelance armies (a lot of them): government hardly functions there. Africa (and other ungoverned parts of the world) are like the period during and after the fall of Rome in Europe, when barbarian hordes roamed free, ripped off whatever they could carry, killed any resisters, recruited malcontents and kept on moving. That era has been labeled "the Dark Ages."

They illustrate what No government looks like. Is that what Grover wants?