Whenever I hear that name, this ill-conceived bit of liberal philosophy comes to mind:

“Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.”

I’ve always found it intellectually horrifying that a famous person can utter something so terribly flawed as this view and not be immediately challenged and taken to the intellectual woodshed for it. This singular quote defines that bumbling sycophant from Plains, Georgia.  I’ll take issue with it by restating it, as I believe it would be, to be essentially accurate.

“Government is an essential structure necessary to make rules for a society to live by.”

That’s about it. It requires no further embellishments.  No need to introduce “human wants”…, unless you have an agenda to push! His definition has NOTHING to do with why government exists. Carter takes off running and states his desired emotional conclusion and then goes about trying to justify it by expounding an emotional belief to define it.  After all “wants” are emotional needs.  What one can very reasonable ascertain from his quotation is that…Government is for the people that wise entity that provides for all their wants.  Read it again and you’ll see.

And therein lies the key to the mental disease we all know as liberalism. Carter’s use of the word “contrivance” reveals him.  In the interest of holding folks to my standard that Words Mean Things the word contrivance means a “scheme” or an “expedient”, not essentially something straightforward and honest in nature.  Held up in comparison to my descriptive of an “essential structure” one can readily see the difference in implication.  The point to take away here is to NEVER accept at stated value words spoken, especially by those we impose a public trust upon to govern us.  Challenge what they say and force them to the responsibility of an accounting for that which they say.

Maybe you remember this flight of fancy The Peanut Farmer took: