Peas and Carrots...

           Forrest Gump liked to say that he and Jenny Curran went together like peas and carrots. While a couple of my Grandchildren might argue about how well peas and carrots go together, or even how well they stand alone, I do appreciate Forrest’s sentiments. Jenny didn’t always seem to share his views, though, and Forrest spent a lot of time being disappointed whenever she moved off in a different direction.

            I imagine we’ve all experienced some type of disappointment in our lives. The first disappointment I remember was when I was about four years old and our Cocker Spaniel, Cindy, became a casualty under the front wheels of our John Deere tractor. The next 61 years brought more frustration, but never anything I couldn’t eventually get over.

            Being a Libertarian, I’m usually disappointed after our nation has an election. I don’t think that is anything new. As far back as I can remember, members of the old parties have felt frustrated and upset when the party other than their own won. And most of the time, most of them got over it.

             I’m not convinced that is going to happen this time around. While a lot of people were upset with Barak Obama, it seems more people are more upset with Donald Trump. And the people who support Trump are upset with the people who don’t. Some disagreements can get downright dangerous. In Scranton Pennsylvania, the YMCA banned cable news programs from its workout rooms because it was leading to fights between people of different political persuasions.

            It’s bad enough that Hillary Clinton has offered to “come out of the woods” to reunite us. Anybody who believes that Ms. Clinton can fix this obviously didn’t pay much attention to the last election. And then again, maybe reuniting us isn’t something the government should worry about.

            Most of the disagreements people are having with Donald Trump, or would have had with Hillary Clinton, are based on the way government wants to use force to control us. Perhaps we need to let the government worry about protecting us from force and fraud by others, and allow all of these upset people to decide how they want to run their own lives.

I understand there are a lot of people who want the government to handle their retirement. There are also a lot of people who don’t.  But if we consider that there are more people alive in the United States today who are in favor of that type of system than the total population in 1935, it’s not such a stretch to believe that system could survive on a voluntary basis.

And out of the 320 million people in the country today, it’s not infeasible that part of them could join a national health care plan while others abstained.  And since we’ve seen support for both choices from all ranges of the social and economic spectrums, it might be easier than the politicians and lobbyists in Washington would have us believe.

It wouldn’t take a lot of taxes for the government to provide only essential and constitutional services for all, and then let people voluntarily use and fund everything else as they choose.

 That way whether we go together like peas and carrots, or oil and water, at least we wouldn’t be so disappointed and upset all the time.