August 22, 2007
by Clay Barham

Years ago, when radio was the primary household entertainment media, there was a weekly program called; Lights Out, by Arch Obler.  One memorable episode involved a chicken heart tossed aside in a poultry slaughterhouse that grew larger by the moment.  It broke down the walls of the building in which it grew. It was unaffected by grenades and gunfire.  As it expanded, its thumping beat grew louder.  The heart began to engulf the countryside.  Larger and larger, louder and louder the deafening beat; it kept on growing until it engulfed the entire world.  People would turn their lights out, gather around the radio and listen to chilling stories like this, but there is some truth here as it relates to the chicken heart.

The basic rule affecting everything on this planet is that all things grow or die.  There is no in between.  It applies to humans, animals, vegetables, minerals, chicken hearts as well as organizations. It explains the growth of government, just like the chicken heart.  As long as nothing prevents it from growing, it will grow, and grow and grow, consuming all that it surrounds.  As it grows, its increase in size creates a vacuum around it, a "giant sucking sound," much like a ship as it sinks and sucks its crew down.  In America, that ship, the growing chicken heart, is the Federal Government.  The crew being "sucked" down as it rises is we, the people who created and supported its growth.

If we look closely at our government, we see that there are many growing chicken hearts. Each one is destined to become a single, enormous, thumping growth that will cover us all.  Each individual chicken heart has a cabinet secretary riding it as it expands.  He or she, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, sits at the top, justifies its growth, but with no control.  Each department grows like the chicken heart.  Their growth is irreversible.  Anyone trying to deny project or appropriation slated for any department will be condemned by press and party.

Each department competes with others for growth-sustaining taxpayer money, with budgets amplified annually by a wholesome percentage, whether needed or not.  Any attempt to reduce an increase, if 10 percent down to only 5 percent, is criticized as a 50 percent reduction in essential programs.  The Defense Department, the easiest to ridicule because of its expensive hardware and personnel, is one where $100 hammers and $1000 toilets justify reductions in its budget.  Many see the Defense Department, like local police departments, as bullying those who threaten our society. They are fair game.

Departments whose purpose is to hire many otherwise disadvantaged people, and operate many useless, unessential projects and programs, are more acceptable because of redistribution of income, punishing taxpayers who have something to pay.  Departments, which duplicate projects and programs ordinarily reserved to the states and the people, are also more acceptable in their chicken heart growth, because elite see local governments and the people as inept.

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As the chicken heart departments grow, competency of its parts decreases until the entire department is unable to function, other than to waste taxpayer's money.  Each employee and manager has risen far above his or her level of competency, usually Petered-out before being hired.  Competency itself becomes the acceptable justification, next to trying to save money or trim waste, for termination in a chicken heart government department. 

In 1866, the Federal Government's tax revenues were $560 million, its expenditures $520 million, and its debt, stemming from the Civil War, was $2.5 billion.  That Federal Debt would never cover the needs of any state in the Union today, and the income and expenditures would never be enough to satisfy most city and county appetites.  The current Federal taxes and debt are in the trillions and going higher with each passing minute. Governor Reagan, in his 1967 request for a $5 billion budget for California was burned in effigy as a big spender, while 20 years later, with less than 50% growth in population, the budget grew twenty times bigger.  The growing appetite for money from the taxpayer's pocket feeds the chicken heart growing to consume America.

Are we better off?  We have enemies abroad, such as the Kali-worshipping Islamist Terrorists, who want to crush us. The crushing appetite of governments here at home also threatens us.  Which is the biggest crushing threat to our liberties, the terrorist who blows up buildings and crash airplanes, or the chicken heart that buries us all?  We strive to fight the one, with an incompetent bureaucracy that will never fight the other.  Where does that leave us?

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Clay Barham [send him email] has been a candidate for the California legislature and a stand-in talk show host for ABC.  He was educated in physical and behavioral sciences, with a Ph.D. in sociology.  He is the author of five books, with his latest being Foundations of Modern American Conservatism and Liberalism: The Roots of Freedom and Tyranny.  Visit his website at http://www.claysamerica.com.