A lot of people have been citing this post by Doctor Zero (which I first saw linked at Instapundit), and I can see why. It is one of the best explanations of the central problem which I think is facing the country, and it bears repeating, and repeating:

Bureaucracies grow through failure. They present failure as a rationale for increased budgets, which they must spend with gusto, in order to submit an even bigger budget the following year.

When he was here at Ann Arbor, Barack Obama summarized this mentality quite well:

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us. We, the people -- (applause.) We, the people, hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders and change our laws, and shape our own destiny.

Government is the police officers who are protecting our communities, and the servicemen and women who are defending us abroad. (Applause.) Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe.

Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them. (Applause.) Government is this extraordinary public university -- a place that's doing lifesaving research, and catalyzing economic growth, and graduating students who will change the world around them in ways big and small. (Applause.)

Hating bureaucracy is thus profoundly immoral, and morality is what this is all about. Back to Doctor Zero:

The true business of government involves converting limited authority, granted through reason, into a limitless moral imperative. The Founders were very logical men. Both the Constitution and Bill of Rights are tightly reasoned documents. So were the original charters of government agencies which have since swollen to grotesque size. A calm, logical application of Constitutional principle would have prevented this... but when government transforms itself into a moral enterprise, people become willing to let it bypass its restrictions. Thus, NASA began with a clear mission whose success was easily measured - is space travel advancing or not? It ends in a great, gelatinous mass of international outreach and Muslim self-esteem, open-ended projects that will never require less funding in any future year.
The transformation from reasoned limitations to moral authority allows the State to abandon logic in the application of fundamental rights, such as property rights. If the State respected the property rights of all citizens equally, it could not exist in its current form. Redistribution would be impossible. A government restrained by reason would be expected to complete its tasks quickly and efficiently, like a private contractor. Its agencies would be terminated for failure, freeing up resources to be allocated elsewhere. Instead, the crusading government brings us trillion-dollar Wars on Poverty that don't reduce poverty, trillion-dollar stimulus bills that don't stimulate anything, and massive departments blending into a Rorschach inkblot of mission creep. None of its agencies will ever complete an assignment, and no amount of money we give it will ever be enough.

The difference between oil and government bureaucrats, of course, is that oil has inherent value. The unelected rulers are precisely the opposite, as they suck away value -- the goal being socialism. Their "productivity" is measured by the elimination of all productivity, and thus, when their programs result in "failure," that means they are succeeding!

This class is growing by leaps and bounds, and if there's one thing they know, it's that they are entitled to have power. But the free market has no use for them, so their unelected jobs must come from government or from the myriad of entities relying on government support.

To follow my cynicism out, if we take it as a given that socialism does not work, but that it is imposed by government, what generally happens when government programs don't work? Why, new programs to fix the old programs, of course. The government will "fix" the problems the government creates. Seen this way, imposing socialism guarantees a vast expansion of the innumerable busybody classes -- especially if it doesn't work. It explains why they have to have socialism.

And the fact that socialism doesn't work, why, it's not a bug, it's a feature!

(And much as it kills me to be fair, I have to admit that if the goal is endless expansion of government, socialism does work!)

Despite the growing uproar, I'm not at all sure that even a brand-new Congress could do what is advocated here:

Salaries and benefits--for identical jobs--are 30 percent to 40 percent higher in the federal government than in the private sector. Claims that this dramatic discrepancy in compensation is warranted because of government workers' high skills are unjustified, as this study shows. Equally unjustified is the fact that federal workers can rarely be fired, no matter how poor their job performance. Congress should align federal salaries and benefits with market rates--a simple, and fair, move that could save taxpayers nearly $47 billion in 2011.

After all, as the president says, the government is all of us!

Better get with the program!

UPDATE: Sean Kinsell links this post in "Get outta my way" -- a great discussion of education -- and Japan! Thanks, Sean!