Free Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza Page B

responsible for building the highways and administering the space program. Government help is needed to protect the environment because, without such help, some companies would pollute the air and water with impunity. The government also supports basic research, provides patent protections, and establishes criteria for product safety. Conservatives should not be embarrassed to support government action in its legitimate sphere.
    But at the same time, we recognize that whatever the government does, it usually does it badly. (I know of only one exception to this rule: the writing of parking tickets.) This is not to suggest that the people who work in government are less competent than those who work in the private sector. The problem is that, unlike the private sector, the government doesn’t have a “bottom line.” There are no clear criteria to determine whether a government program is working. Some years ago, a bureaucrat in the Washington, D.C., public school system said, “How can you say that our public school system is a failure? Lots of people work here.” By his standard, the school system was impressively fulfilling its function of providing employment to lots of people.
    Conservatives know that government continues to do things that aren’t needed, or that could be done better by someone else. Some liberals now recognize this, too; but
I must say, they are slow learners. Frequently they must be dragged, kicking and howling, to conclusions that are patently obvious. The reason for the liberal’s obstinacy and reluctance is that the miserable fellow is painfully discovering that his basic theory is wrong.
    Wrong in what sense? When I was in college, I learned from my political science textbooks that the government simply must run the lighthouses, because if it didn’t, no one would. I also learned that the government must deliver the mail, otherwise lots of people would never get a letter. Prisons, I was further informed, were a necessary government responsibility. Finally, my textbooks were insistent that, without public schools, millions of Americans would receive no education at all.
    The experience of the past couple of decades has shown that every one of these assumptions is either dubious or demonstrably false. Today, there are many privately run lighthouses. The argument about government mail delivery has stumbled into a two-word rebuttal: Federal Express. Private mail carriers are now ubiquitous, and there is no reason to believe that they could not deliver regular mail as efficiently as they deliver packages and overnight mail. Prisons routinely contract out services to private contractors, and some prisons are entirely run by private companies. Moreover, there is no logical reason why private markets cannot provide education services through high school for all; the government’s role could then be limited to providing assistance to those who would not otherwise be able to afford those services.

    “But,” I have heard many students ask, “Isn’t Big Government necessary to check the influence of Big Business?” In a few cases—such as the recent corporate accounting scandals—the answer is yes. In general, though, the power of big business over the average American is quite limited. To sell its shares and its products, the business must persuade investors and customers. It must win their consent before taking their money.
    But this is not true of Big Government. Let me illustrate with an example, which I have drawn from economist Walter Williams. The federal government has a program called Social Security that is intended to help me save for my retirement. What if I were to say, “I appreciate the gesture, folks, but no thanks. I don’t want to be part of this program. I am not going to pay any Social Security taxes, and I forgo any future claim on benefits. When I am old and cannot support myself, I will draw on my private savings, or rely on relatives and friends, or appeal to private