ABSTRACT
Jeff Madrick has written a fine book called The Case for Big Gov ernment, published by Princeton University Press. My purpose in writing this article is more modest. I would simply like to make the case for the very idea of government itself. The advocates of the free market have been busily privatizing everything from the military to the Congress by contracting out work to mercenaries and lobby ists. There is hardly anything that they have not tried to privatize, including the purchase of elections. But let me remind you that the United States would not exist at all but for a government that gained independence from Britain, purchased Louisiana from the French, stole Texas, California, and the Wild West from the Mexicans, and bought Alaska from the Russians, notwithstanding the fact that the entire continent was stolen from the Indians and the Eskimos to begin with. Pierre Joseph Proudhon wrote that “property is theft.” But then the Indians and the Eskimos did not share our concept of property.
