by Simon Black
Years ago when I was in the military, I had the privilege of serving with some of the finest people I will ever know in my entire life.
It’s not a cliché. Many of my brothers in arms were incredibly honest, hard working, dedicated, loyal, intelligent, creative, courageous, and more.
And yet, if I’m being brutally honest, I also have to acknowledge that I also served alongside quite a few scumbags.
I remember one enlisted soldier in my unit who was arrested by Secret Service agents one day because he had been counterfeiting $100 bills on a Laserjet printer. (He should have been a central banker instead.)
Others routinely beat their wives and children. Others were petty criminals and kleptomaniacs.
It was a small number, for sure. But there were certainly plenty of bad apples in the military. And there are always going to be bad apples in any large organization– whether it’s the Army, or the entire federal government.
This is important. Because we live in a time when apparently the solution to EVERYTHING is MORE GOVERNMENT. Bigger government. And more expensive government.
This week, just like that… poof. The government became much bigger.
Politicians are cheering this legislative ‘victory’ as the dubiously-named ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ was passed and signed into law on Tuesday. As I’ve said before, the bill will probably make inflation worse.
But even more, the bill aims to expand the size and scope of the federal government… as if it weren’t big enough and powerful enough already.
And this takes me back to bad apples. There are already millions of people who work for the federal government. Even if just the bottom 10% are bad apples– people who abuse their positions and power for personal gain, or because of their ideological fanaticism, then a lot of terrible things can happen.
The IRS is going to potentially hire tens of thousands of people. If even 10% of those are bad apples, the damage they’ll cause is incalculable.
Exhibit A: Just take a look at the CDC. This week they admitted, rather sheepishly, that nearly everything they did during the COVID pandemic was wrong. The CDC acknowledged being plagued by a horrific culture of selfishness, bureaucracy, fear, careerism, and ineptitude, and that they need a “reset”.
“It’s not lost on me that we fell short in many ways,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, in an honest assessment of her agency’s response to COVID.
Of course there are some smart, good-natured, intelligent people who work for the CDC. But with such a toxic culture, the entire organization became a Bad Apple within the government. And the consequences that resulted will be felt for years to come.
Thanks in part to the CDC’s response to COVID, the US economy ground to a halt. The supply chain broke down. Mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence problems skyrocketed. Censorship and cancel culture reigned. And trust in major institutions, including the medical industry, plummeted.
Constantly expanding the size and authority of government only increases this risk of terrible consequences. Yet it seems to be the only solution that politicians can ever come up with.
This is the topic of our podcast today: bad apples… and why having a Plan B is really so important.