A Needful Blessing for the Tsar; P. Trieb

THEFREEMAN IDEASON L1BERlY A NEEDFUL BLESSING FOR THE TSAR by Phil Trieb I n the opening scene of Fiddler on the Roof, the rabbi's son asks: "Is there a proper blessing for the tsar?" The rabbi responds: "A blessing for the tsar?" He ponders awhile, then pronounces: "Of course ... May God bless and keep the tsar ... far away from us!" I may be partial to the line, because it belonged to me when I played the rabbi in a community presentation of that nearly thir ty-year-old musical. In a production that still has much to say to America in the waning years of the twentieth century, that line may well be the most pertinent of the play, as regards our national crisis today. Because for anything from hangnail to hurricane, the reaction of first resort, rather than the last, is to run to Uncle Sam, who, for the sweetness of his benefits, is known by many today as "Uncle Sugar." To those less possessed of affection for beneficent tyranny, the vision of a huge "Uncle Sow," suckling legions of should be-weaned pigs, is more appropriate.

To the villagers of Messrs. Stein, Bock, and Harnick's fictional Anatevka, the less contact with the agents of the tsar, the better. Or, as Jefferson stated: "That gov ernment is best which governs least." In Fiddler, the Jewish villagers are forced Mr. Trieb is a father, husband, newspaper col umnist, and graphic artist in Gary, South Da kota. to leave their "dear little village" under a pogrom, not initiated by the tsar, but nev ertheless benignly endorsed, in that he does nothing to stop the racist deportations or dered by his underlings. We have a parallel situation today in America. The president's administration may not initiate the privations experienced by those being ground up in the gears of the Internal Revenue Service, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the En vironmental Protection Agency, or any of the scores of other federal agencies, but in that it does nothing in its ultimate political and administrative power to stop the ex cesses, the administration thereby endorses the economic and judicial deportations: of families forced from homes, farms, and businesses by government edict, rules and regs, bankruptcy borne of confiscatory tax ation, or worse.

For all the talk of reinventing and stream lining government, there is in place an inexorable principle in the United States today: bureaucracies never die, they only grow. And to grow, these bureaucracies, which never produce any wealth of their own, must consume the productive wealth of others. Of course, taxation has been the traditional means, but increasingly, the con sumption occurs through regulation, or en forcement. This can be rather benign, in the irrita141 142 THE FREEMAN • MARCH 1994 tions of paperwork necessitated by niggling regulations. A small business owner decides not to invent this widget or improve that whatsit-neither of which is crucial to life, but both of which are conducive to its comforts-because the licenses, permits, paperwork, and bureaucratic scrutiny make the reward minuscule compared to the cost. Of course, the niggling can add up. A current study estimates that Americans are expending $100 billion per year to cover the burdensome record-keeping requirements imposed by government on the health care system.