To the editor:

I am having trouble understanding Doug Harvey’s letter of July 16 lamenting the weakening of the government because the portion of the economy it controls and the scope of power it commands are greater today than ever before.

Since the New Deal, the U.S. government has increasingly been forged into a tool for the forcible extraction of wealth from one group of people for the benefit of another. As a result, American politics is increasingly polarized and venomous. It is difficult to be civil with a mugger.

Now, people like Mr. Harvey lament the evils of corporate power. Surely he knows that corporations are some of the biggest beneficiaries of government largess and protection? One only has to examine the blizzard of obstructionist regulations, protectionist policies and corporate welfare that aid large corporations at the expense of small businesses, consumers and workers.

In 1944, F.A. Hayek warned us that governmental control of the economy represents “The Road to Serfdom.” Not only are we proceeding undeterred down that road, we’ve mashed the gas pedal to the floor.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis summed it up in 1928. “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Galen Thies,

Lawrence