The art of Bonsai has always fascinated me. It is said to have developed when men noticed tiny replicas of full grown trees growing on cliff sides, and reasoned that the harsh conditions of falling stones clipping branches caused the trees to maintain a low profile. This strange mix of art and horticulture utilizes types of trees well suited to this manipulation of nature, and provides aesthetically pleasing results through constant clipping, shaping, and intervention.
So what does Bonsai have to do with politics? Well, we could look at society, the economy, education, industry, commerce… as being the trees; and governmental intervention as being the “Bonsai” artist, constantly trying to shape the trees into utopian perfection through regulation, social engineering, and economic manipulation. The Bonsai artist uses a natural life form and imposes his image of perfection upon it. The result, if well done, is something pleasing to look at; but the cost of the art is stunted growth. The artist has usurped the dominion of nature. These Bonsai trees provide no home for living things, no shade from the noon-day sun, and no food for man or beast. Likewise, the overly intrusive government might well provide beautifully constructed systems that look good on paper, or possibly even in implementation… but what is the cost to the “trees”?
Trees left to themselves to grow as God would have them, will reach toward the Sun and create great forests and jungles. There is beauty in the randomness, and the World should have forests and jungles, but most of us don’t want to live in a jungle! Likewise a society free of governmental intervention becomes a jungle, in which survival of the fittest is the only rule. So we are left with the question, how much government is too much government?
Somewhere between the Bonsai artist and Grizzly Adams lies the lowly farmer. The farmer is more concerned with the utility of his actions than the artistic impression. His interventions are designed to assist and maximize nature, not to control or change it. He may prune trees, fertilize crops, work the land; but ultimately he recognizes that he is too small to take dominion over nature, that the true art is in the earth, not his hands. If something he does damages the crops he is trying to raise, he stops doing it… abundant growth, and nature’s bounty are the ultimate goals. When farmers lose this concept of working with nature, indeed FOR nature, the result is the dust bowl… or Monsanto!
The husbandry of government should mimic that of the farmer. It is not big enough, nor can it be, to change all the dynamics of society, or to solve all its problems. If it attempts to do so, its intervention will drag the society down and stunt its growth. A free society, assisted by it’s government more than restricted by it, is ultimately the only force great enough to sustain growth.
IMHO: Utopian visions of politicians, along with delusions of grandeur often blind the government to its only given mission, to serve society. Ever servants and never lords should describe our leaders, but sadly seldom does. The result is just one more burden for society to carry. When rightly done, with the resources devoted to it; our government should be a powerful tool… we should be thriving. Wrongly done, we become odd little trees which provide nothing but pleasure for their creators, or else some wild jungle of individuals fighting for survival… or perhaps some freakish and pathetic combination of the two.
