What are the two major differences between these two natural disasters: the Oklahoma tornado of 2013 and the Michigan fire of 1881?

The first difference is that, bad as the tornado in Oklahoma this week was, the Michigan fire of 1881 was more devastating. Raging flames swept through eastern Michigan, killing almost 200 people and destroying over one million acres of timberland and much property in four counties.

A second difference is seen in the prevailing attitudes toward private charity and the role of government. True, in the Oklahoma tornado we have seen heroic work by teachers, citizens, and local church members. Those groups have saved lives and mitigated damage. Oklahomans tend to be resilient and self-reliant. But more emphasis in the media has been focused on high-profile politicians, who are promising to give other people’s tax dollars to victims of the tornado.

At the time of the Michigan fire, Americans looked inward to themselves, not outward to the federal government to assist victims. They became the most generous people on earth, partly because they knew government had nothing to give except what it taxed away in the first place, and partly because they saw it as a personal responsibility to help their fellow citizens in need.

In fact, the Michigan fire of 1881 became one of the catalysts for starting the American Red Cross. Clara Barton led the way in promoting relief for Michigan fire victims from her home town of Dansville, New York. According to locals there, Clara Barton “rallied us to our work,” which meant sending food, clothing, and other gifts to Michiganders who were victims of the fire. Railroads provided the shipping. New Yorkers left jobs and homes to rush to Michigan and help the people there rebuild.

No presidential summit on voluntarism was needed because the volunteers simply showed up. And they did so in San Francisco 25 years later when that city was ravaged by a huge earthquake.

Robin Lampson, who lived through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, has described how the not-so-prosperous people nearby all pitched in to help the earthquake recovery. “So it was,” Lampson said, “that farmers and their wives, even from the most distant farms in that section of the valley, brought in their contributions—more sacks of potatoes and dried fruits, plus hundreds of quarts of canned fruits and vegetables. Dressed and roasted chickens were hauled in by the dozens. . . . This went on for many days.” The San Francisco area recovered rapidly.

Our nation’s Founders limited government because they wanted people to help people in time of need. Giving one-on-one establishes habits of trust and friendship that create a blessing for the giver as well as for the receiver. Writing government checks does not do that, and, given the corruption and incompetence of many government officials, the Founders believed money would likely be wasted if Washington was given the task of providing relief.

The heroes of the 1881 Michigan fire were thousands of private citizens, whose names rarely made headlines and whose selfless devotion has since been forgotten. Likewise, the heroes of the Oklahoma tornado today are those who are helping with their own resources, not the politicians who come to distribute other people’s money.

President Obama used his graduation address at Ohio State this month to make the case for bigger government. Let’s look at an important section of that speech, and then analyze it—especially in light of the scandals that broke out last week.

“We know,” President Obama told the graduates, “this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition. Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices.” Let’s analyze this statement.

“We know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition.”

Oddly, Americans pursuing their own individual ambition is not something to deplore, but something to celebrate. It’s what has made this country prosper. Farmers, laborers, and inventors do what they do largely to advance their individual ambition. In fact, no society built on anything else has ever succeeded. Communist societies, for example, which are structured on state direction to improve humanity, have always failed. Tyrannies always fail sooner or later. That is the record of history. Even President Obama, when he makes cabinet appointments, doesn’t do so on merit, but because those appointees advance President Obama’s “own individual ambition.” Timothy Geitner, for example, couldn’t even do his own income taxes properly, but the president installed him as Secretary of Treasury for political reasons. Other presidents do the same. Pursuing individual ambition has been a key to American success.

“Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works.”

Conservatives and libertarians believe in limited government, not no government at all. They don’t want to “gum up the works,” they want to make government smaller and more constitutional. Bigger government is inefficient and unwieldy as we see from both the Benghazi and IRS scandals. In the Benghazi scandal, if we are to believe the president, the CIA could not coordinate honestly with the State Department. In the IRS scandal, some IRS leaders did “do their best to gum up the works” through their progressive ideology. They denied tea party groups the same rights as are given to progressive groups. These bureaucrats, to quote the president in a different context, pursued nothing greater than their own individual ambition. But here they did so with government power behind them to stop their opponents.

“Or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”

“These voices” who speak of tyranny lurking close by often make much sense. We see the IRS using its power to damage those who think differently. Also, our right to freedom of speech is in jeopardy if the president’s men can, as they have done, willfully examine phone records of reporters who released a story one day before the president could do so. The Founders warned us that in a free society we had to beware of tyranny. James Madison, a former president, stated the problem of tyranny this way: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” If our federal government can’t control itself better than it has, then tyranny indeed is lurking just around the corner.

The U.S. federal bureaucracy is simply too large. That broad point is easy to lose in the particulars over the Benghazi deaths, the IRS targeting of conservatives, the Justice Department’s secret investigation of the AP, and the Department of Health and Human Services subtly forcing insurance companies to cough up cash to publicize the wonders of Obamacare.

These scandals need to be fully investigated and justice needs to be served if laws were broken. But the larger point must always be at hand: government is too big, and when big government occurs, big scandals inevitably emerge. The Founders knew that, and that’s why they limited government to national defense, delivering the mail, and setting up federal election rules. The Founders believed that government was a source of danger, not a source of action and reform.

Let’s focus on the IRS. The Bureau of Internal Revenue has existed since the Civil War, when President Lincoln created it to collect taxes to pay for the war. But we don’t hear many stories of abuses by the IRS in the 1800s because it was small, and Americans had more of a commitment to limited government. In fact, Congress abolished the Civil War income tax in 1872.

By 1913, we had the income tax back (the 16th Amendment), but only a few people had to pay it. The IRS was still small. Then came Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal in 1933. FDR promoted government programs as the solution to the problem of the Great Depression. After almost eight years of lavish New Deal spending, unemployment neared 20% in 1939. The spending stimulus, then as now, did not work. But FDR raised tax rates on almost everyone during his presidency. The IRS grew and became FDR’s political tool. In fact, Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, said, “My father may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution.”

Just as the IRS under President Obama targeted conservative groups, so did the IRS under FDR. Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-N.Y.) had attacked the “collectivism of the New Deal and its Gestapo methods that threaten free government.” In turn FDR had the IRS audit many years of Fish’s tax returns. Fish also learned from Senator Clyde Reed that his “phone was being tapped, and so were those of many other Republican members of Congress.” When John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers, opposed FDR, Lewis’s taxes were audited. But Lewis’s tax returns were in order. FDR’s gambit to nail Lewis failed. As the Attorney General told FDR, “When you shoot at a king [meaning John L. Lewis] you have to hit him.”

Roosevelt had better luck with his IRS audit against Moses Annenberg, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Annenberg wrote scathing editorials against FDR, and during lunch on April 11, 1939, FDR and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau discussed what to do about Annenberg. FDR told Morgenthau, “I want Moe Annenberg for dinner.” Morgenthau responded, “You’re going to have him for breakfast—fried.” And that’s what happened. After a remarkably thorough audit, Annenberg was sent to prison and FDR, without Annenberg to pester him in Philadelphia, carried the key state of Pennsylvania in his next election.

Republicans have been guilty, too. That’s the point. The IRS needs to be slashed and stripped of much of its power—not turned over to Republicans to do audits on Democrats. Richard Nixon once said, “We have the power. Are we using it now to investigate contributors to Humphrey , contributors to [Edmund] Muskie—the Jews, you know, that are stealing in every direction? Are we going after their tax returns?”

Lord Acton reminded us that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Let’s cut the IRS in half (or more), and cut HHS and the Department of Justice as well. Many people are watching scandal-a-day government with horror, and public sentiment may be ready to slash the size and power of government, and thereby increase the amount of freedom in all of our lives.

Students all over the country are graduating from college this month. Two commencement addresses at these graduations are worth noting because they illustrate the two major but very different visions for our country: first is the constitutional vision of limited government, and second is the statist vision that looks to government to solve problems.

Senator Ted Cruz presented the constitutional vision at Hillsdale College last Saturday. Cruz began by noting that most people in history have had very little freedom because they have lived under monarchies. The Founders broke that tradition. They declared independence from England and wrote a Constitution that enshrined the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights, the Founders argued, came from God, not government. Government was instituted to protect those natural rights that God has given every human being.

Cruz argued that the story of America is the story of liberty and prosperity that have flourished under the constitutional protection of limited government. The free market is, Cruz said, that “engine of prosperity.” He noted that the U.S. has 4.5% of the world’s population but produces 22% of the world’s output. And the American influence is even greater in entertainment, science, and the internet.

The freedom given to Americans has meant that many Americans have started poor and ended up rich; and other Americans were born into wealth, but have lost much of it during their lives. Freedom produces a churning effect. But Cruz likes what he called “opportunity conservatism,” the notion that public policy should look to ensuring that poor people always have the chance in a free society to work hard and improve their lives. Government often gets in the way of this. Therefore, government needs to be limited to keep it from harming those in society who are most vulnerable.

At Ohio State University, President Obama argued something quite different. He contended that government needs to be large and has done good things when it has been increased in size. To some extent he did a sleight of hand. He often mixed individual achievement and government achievement as though they were the same thing. What is accomplished under “self-government” is not at all the same as what is accomplished under “government.” “The Founders left us,” the president said, “the power to adapt to changing times. They left us the key to a system of self-government–the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone.” That included, among other things, the president said, “To stretch railroads and electricity and a highway system across a sprawling continent. To educate our people. . . .”

The Constitution did not provide for government to do “important things together,” like building schools, railroads, electricity networks, or highways (except to deliver mail). Government, the Founders believed, should only be in the business of protecting liberty through national defense, the enforcement of contracts, and free elections. Private citizens invented and built railroads and discovered how to use electricity. Schools and highways were private or state functions. The federal government was given the power of protection, not the power of action within the economy.

In President Obama’s example of railroads stretching across the country, many people in the 1850s wanted those railroads to be entirely private. It was not a group effort of doing “important things together.” When some politicians proposed a federally built railroad across the country, southern states strongly opposed the idea. Only when they left the Union could Congress find the votes to build the road. The resulting Union Pacific Railroad proved to be an expensive disaster, and then it went broke. However, James J. Hill built the privately-constructed Great Northern Railroad with no federal subsidies; it never went broke and was built exceptionally well.

The president also used the example of education as an achievement of government. A key point here is that many politicians early in our history wanted to fund a national university, another “let’s do important things together” moment, but Congress would not pass the bill to set up the university because the Constitution did not allow it. “Self-government” never meant an intrusive government. Also, when we look at public or “government” education today, we often see the wisdom of our Founders in keeping it private.

If the United States is to continue as a beacon of liberty and a fount of prosperity, Senator Cruz argued the U.S. must have limited government. People inventing, creating, and helping other people is a better recipe for success than exchanging our freedom for bigger government, and then asking that bigger government “do big and important things together” that the Founders never intended it to do.

After the tragic bombing at the Boston Marathon, even many conservatives wish to give more power to the federal government for surveillance and wiretapping. Before doing so, however, we need to study how other presidents used expanded power in the area of civil liberties.

During World War II, for example, the Japanese launched a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, and many Germans within the U.S. were spying for Hitler. Internal security, then as now, was an important issue. What did our president do then?

First, shortly after the Japanese bombing, which was admittedly much greater in damage than what happened last month in Boston, Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order to intern about 110,000 Japanese-Americans in relocation camps without due process of law. Even J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, who had the best espionage network in the country, always argued that very few Japanese-Americans were disloyal. He said, “The necessity for mass evacuation is based primarily upon public and political pressure rather than on factual data.” Hoover was right, and immediately after FDR was safely re-elected to his fourth term in 1944, he began efforts to release the innocent Japanese-Americans.

Second, FDR used the war emergency to launch illegal wiretaps. In December 1939, the Supreme Court, in Nardone v. United States, barred federal officials from using wiretaps in law enforcement. Robert Jackson, the Attorney General, therefore ordered an end to wiretaps. But FDR insisted that Jackson do illegal wiretaps anyway but limit such investigations “insofar as possible to aliens.” For that limited time, FDR was only using wiretaps on aliens.

But when civil liberties are violated for one group, they tend to be later violated for other groups. In FDR’s case, he expanded wiretaps from aliens to political opponents. Rep. Hamilton Fish was just one of many Republican congressmen who was wiretapped, and when that failed, Fish’s income tax was audited. Then came reporters. For example, Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune deplored the president’s constant wiretaps. The “taps continued on my home [and office] throughout the war,” Trohan complained. “There was seldom a dull moment for me. All of my better news sources knew of the wiretaps, so we had to arrange outside meetings for transmission of news.”

After that, the president began wiretaps on cabinet members, such as James Farley, then vice-president Henry Wallace, and even his own wife Eleanor. What started as a small illegal effort to do wiretaps on aliens became a massive surveillance of Americans. Power corrupted. As John Roosevelt, the president’s son observed, “Hell, my father just about invented bugging. [He] had them spread all over, and thought nothing of it.”*

As Americans we want to be safe, but we also want to be free. If we trade too much freedom for safety, as Ben Franklin warned, we will end up with neither.

*Quotations for this blog are from the chapter “FDR and Civil Liberties” in FDR Goes to War by Burton and Anita Folsom.

Perhaps because they rely on their political contacts and not their ability to give customers a good deal?

The use of political contacts for financial gain certainly isn’t limited to either the Democrats or the Republicans. Here are some examples:

The most recent failures include Fisker Automotive and SoloPower–part of the “green energy disasters” that have added billions of dollars to the national debt. According to the New York Times, “No electric vehicle initiative backed by Washington seems more of a debacle than Fisker.” Fisker received a $529,000,000 loan, and now can’t make repayments. SoloPower, according to Rachel Slobodian of the Heritage Foundation, just closed its Portland plant and had to “gut its remaining workforce.”

True, President Obama has supported most of the failed green energy disasters. Before A123 Systems went broke, it wasted more than $500,000,000 in federal and state loans. During his first term, President Obama erroneously said of this company, “There is A123, a clean energy manufacturer in Michigan that just hired its 1000th worker as demand has soared for its vehicle components. Companies like these are taking root and putting people to work in every corner of the country.”

But wait. The bankrupt A123 Systems grabbed its first federal subsidy from the Bush Administration in 2001. The Bush Administration in 2007 also endorsed a $400,000,000 loan guarantee to Abound Solar–which also failed.

Going back in history, the federally subsidized Union Pacific Railroad, which went bankrupt several times in the 1800s, received its first subsidies from Republicans.

Free markets, not federal subsidies, are the answer. In the example of the failed Union Pacific Railroad, after it failed, James J. Hill built the Great Northern Railroad from St. Paul to Seattle with no federal cash. And the Great Northern was a well built line that never went broke.

Likewise, private companies like Whole Foods and many others are figuring out how to “go green” in ways that help customers and cost taxpayers no distress.

Corporate subsidies are the road to national bankruptcy, not economic prosperity. The government has a proven track record of picking failures for business subsidies. All political parties need to discover this truth. Giving tax dollars to one incompetent company after another has been a bi-partisan error. Let’s correct it.

“Let’s cut some federal agencies by 5%,” Congress and President Obama agreed back in 2010. “That would make our nation more solvent and strong.” That strategy became what is now called the “sequester.”

Excellent idea, but when the “sequestering” of funds began, many Democrats decided they wanted tax hikes, and no cuts in federal spending. Too late. Our nation cut 5% ($600 million) in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and similar amounts from many other federal agencies as well.

What did the FAA (with the president’s blessing) decide to whittle from its budget to save $600 million? Answer: The Air-traffic controllers. Those are the critical people charged with making travel safe. Nothing was cut from the $500 million the FAA spends each year on “consultants,” and nothing from the $325 million it spends on supplies and travel.

Along similar lines, the Wall Street Journal reported today (“Flight Delays as Political Strategy,” April 23, p. A22) that no cut in the $474 million in grants to “make communities more livable and sustainable” has been made from the Department of Transportation (DOT) budget. All of the padding in the FAA and DOT budgets remains in place; instead, air-traffic controllers are being furloughed–in hopes that a crisis will force Congress to raise taxes and give the bureaucrats the tax dollars they covet.

When the airlines, which are private companies, run into debt, they can’t run to the government for a subsidy. They must fire employees or figure out how to cut costs. In the last four years, they have done both.

For example, in recent years, the airlines have redesigned space around major airports to cut flying time–and thus fuel consumption. In addition, airlines are using the auxiliary power units on their planes less and saving fuel that way. Also, according to US Airways, “Most aircraft now taxi to and from gates using only one engine, as long as the pilot determines that it’s safe to do so. Single-engine taxis on the ground can reduce fuel burn by about 40 percent.” (“Fuel Economy,” usairwaysmag.com, April 2013, p. 12)

That’s how people in the private sector save money and jobs. Federal agencies, like the FAA, however, don’t want to fire bureaucrats or cut their perks and travel budgets. Instead, to scare Americans into giving them what they want, bureaucrats cut air-traffic controllers–which has forced delays and increased chances for accidents. Giving in to this strategy would in effect be submitting to blackmail and also set a dangerous precedent. Let’s keep the cuts and make the bureaucrats accountable for all harm.

I saw the movie “42″ yesterday. It tells with gusto the remarkable story of Jackie Robinson, and how he integrated Major League Baseball in 1947. The title refers to the number on Robinson’s uniform.

Sometimes lost in the details, however, are two key points about Jackie Robinson and individual liberty. First, this triumph of civil rights only happened when blacks and whites worked together. Branch Rickey, the white general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, had a vision for integrated baseball, and he chose Robinson carefully as the man who could work with him to break down the barriers of segregation. Each man needed the other.

One hundred years earlier, we see the same pattern. Harriet Tubman was using the Underground Railroad to free her fellow slaves and break down the institution of slavery. But she, too, had dramatic help from a white man–Thomas Garrett. Garrett was eventually jailed for helping runaway slaves reach freedom in Philadelphia. Advances in civil rights have often required both races to work together to fulfill the goals of the Declaration of Independence.

Slavery and racism are despicable, but the crucial lesson to teach our students is that the obstacle of racism has been broken most effectively when blacks and whites have worked together.

My second point is that in a market economy, racists are losers. They fail because they shun people who can add value. The Brooklyn Dodgers integrated in 1947, and that same year they won the National League pennant. The Dodgers were also pennant contenders for many years afterward. The St. Louis Cardinals had won the pennant in 1944 and 1946, but refused to integrate and never won another pennant until they did.

In the American League, the Cleveland Indians integrated first, and they won a pennant and World Series quickly in 1948. Detroit and Boston, two strong contenders and pennant winners in the 1940s, became two of the worst teams in baseball in the 1950s because they refused to sign black players.

Finally, in desperation, Boston and Detroit became the last teams to integrate by 1959, and both teams returned to their pennant-winning ways in the 1960s. Market economics, not government intervention, integrated every major league team in only 12 years.

This fascinating story began with Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson in the 1940s, but it still inspires audiences today. When I was in the audience yesterday, the crowd clapped at the end of the movie in strong appreciation for what these men accomplished.

1.  We need the income tax to pay all the costs of running our federal government.  No, the current income tax is a huge premium we pay for the services and the meddling we receive from our government.  Only for the last 100 years have we had the 16th amendment, which permits an income tax.  Before that we supported our government through taxes on imports, taxes on whiskey and tobacco, and on the sale of federal land. That was it.  Even with that limited tax base, our leaders usually spent money wisely, and we had budget surpluses most years before 1913.  We actually cut our Civil War debt in half.  We learned this lesson:  When our politicians had little money to spend, they rarely went over budget.

2.  We need a large income tax to give more needed social services to the American people.  No, the greater the flow of cash into the government, the greater the waste and the worse the social services.  In the 1800s, people in need got help from churches and local charities. People helped people directly; almost no one depended on federal bureaucrats and welfare checks.  In the late 1800s, various entrepreneurs and community leaders began the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, humane societies, and orphanages across the country. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill to give seeds to drought-stricken farmers in Texas because he wanted people, not government, to help bail out those in need.  Charities throughout the U.S. rushed to help their fellow Americans; more money was sent to the needy farmers than was provided in the bill Cleveland had vetoed.

3.  The rich ought to pay proportionately much more income tax than everyone else.  Wrong again.  The rich already pay much more than everyone else–and taxing them even more only causes them to hide their wealth, or take it elsewhere.  The 14th amendment promises equal protection of the laws to all citizens, and if we discriminate against the rich, the door is open to pass laws discriminating against blacks, women, and old people.  When President Franklin Roosevelt began taxing the rich at rates of 80, 90, and 94%, he discovered that their wealth vanished from sight.  When that happened, he could have let the rich keep more of what they earned.  But he chose to keep taxes high on the rich, and instead he hiked taxes on the middle class and poor to make up for the revenue lost because rich people were now sheltering their income through various tax dodges.  Should we be following FDR’s example today?

The most common view about the national debt is this: “We are $16 trillion in debt, an amount so big that we probably need to save money by spending less on some of our federal programs, and doing without the benefits they provide.” The implication in this statement is that we have two desirable goals competing for our favor. First, we want to get out of debt, or at least stop it from increasing. Second, we have helpful federal programs that should continue.

The first statement is true–we need to reduce our debt to maintain our national integrity. But the second statement is often false: many of our most expensive federal programs actually do harm.

For example, federal aid to education pours billions of dollars into schools (and school bureaucracies) every year, but test scores have gone steadily downward for four decades. The years when federal aid first increased sharply, 1964-70, were the very years that SAT scores for high school students first began their steady decline. My Hillsdale colleague, economist Gary Wolfram, estimates that more than 40% of the students in Detroit public schools are functionally illiterate. Yet they have had a torrent of federal dollars pumped into their city and into their schools.

A second example is welfare. By increasing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in the 1960s, we provided more federal money, Medicaid, and rent subsidies to single mothers. Granted, single mothers have a tough job, and they often deserve our help. But the federal aid gave some of them incentives to have more children and not to get married (because they would lose the aid). Children born to unwed mothers increased from one in twenty in 1960 to one in four by 2000. Federal money seems to have increased that problem.

The solution is not to shun schools or unwed mothers. The solution is to strengthen the tie between the giver and the receiver.

When a family or a church helps single mothers, both groups gain. The mother knows someone cares, and the church members take delight in improving society. When a teacher is paid mostly by students, or the parents of students, rather than by government, the teacher knows he or she must deliver a useful product or payments will not continue.

Cutting much of the federal budget may help our country, regardless of whether or not the national debt is reduced. And encouraging individuals to give directly to the poor or to needy schools or to single mothers improves the lives of both the givers and the receivers.