It took my dear Wife to remind me of that wonderful aphorism about activists first put forward by P.J. O'Rourke way back in the 90's: "Everybody wants to save the World but no one wants to help Mom wash the dishes." Like the song says in "Hair", it's "Easy to be hard", it's so easy, especially for people who care about evil and social injustice to be proud and say no to caring for the ones in your life that really matter.
But my Wife came up with a delightful macro-economic take on this moral. It is best expressed in another of her favourite metaphors: "Take care of the First downs and the Touchdowns take care of themselves." In other words, the biggest problems in the World - war, abortion, crime - could be solved if we just do some simple things to make them less needful, likely or rampant. It is incrementalism at its best.
Instead of grand schemes or transformative programs or pervasive laws, why not just try simple things like trading more freely with each other, creating good ongoing conditions for education and work, being as vigilant in snuffing out petty crime as serious and so on. We just take care of the little things daily, bit by bit, and do some hard work along the way. We'll be happy and better off in the end. Give people real choices in life and let them take charge of their lives and the big problems will start to look far less daunting, indeed.
What I love about this take the most is that it urgently calls for the government to leave people alone so that they can realize their potential to the maximum. We all then become stronger, better, happier and less dependent on the State so that we are citizens better able to combat the big problems that remain, too. It's not sexy to many who count their success in how many new laws they have deeded to us but I happen to find its emphasis on self reliance, human genius and common sense a real turn on!
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