Balance and the Teeter-Totter

SEE HERE  Who knows what to believe these days?  The media is full of Obamaphilia with no notion of real truth and no motivation to explore the details of things that might rock their establishment views that praise the Obama administration for just breathing.  Meanwhile on the other side of the spectrum are those who see nothing but malevolence in the actions of an administration that seems bent on crushing conventional carbon based energy on the strength of horrendously bad pseudo-science, who pursue scientifically specious so-called "green" technologies, are focused on increasing the debt to such an extent that we're now on track to total societal bankruptcy and economic collapse if something really drastic isn't done and done soon.  I live somewhere between these extremes.

Today on Facebook I posted the following:

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." --Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

History shows that men are not to be trusted with governance either singly or collectively. They fall prey to the notion that because they have been given power they somehow deserve and are hence a cut above the rest of men.

In that direction lies tyranny. "That Government is best which governs least" is a quote often attributed to Jefferson, but appears to be due to Thoreau, but regardless it is an enduring truth. It is also true that "Politicians are like diapers; they need to be changed often and for the same reason." — Mark Twain. I don't know if the attribution to Twain is correct. However if we combine the observations that 1) the least government is best, and 2) those that govern should be changed often. Then I think we arrive at a formula for good governance.

The notion that government is the solution to everything is simply crazy and a recipe for tyranny. The notion that government is good for nothing is simply crazy and a recipe for anarchy and the law of the jungle. The solution is to find the proper mean, the middle way, as Aristotle so correctly observed so long ago.