Government Shutdown

In a recent article, John Tamny at Forbes argues that the Republicans should be proud of their ability to shut down the federal government:

It quite simply must be asked what the point of the Republican Party is if it’s not regularly shutting down the federal government? As the “responsible stewards of the people’s money,” shutdown should be a part of the GOP’s readily unsheathed arsenal of weapons meant to always be shrinking the size and scope of our economy-asphyxiating federal government.

I want to draw attention to a particular problem with this line of reasoning: "shutting down the the federal government" is a misnomer. That is, a "shutdown" does not have the effect of weakening the federal government as a whole. It is Congress, the branch of the federal government that maintains some semblance of being accountable to the interests of the people, that is weakened and delegitimized in the wake of a shutdown. In fact, those branches of the federal government most inimical to freedom -- the bloated executive branch, the disgustingly enormous military, and the growing apparatuses of the security state -- are least weakened, and in that sense relatively strengthened, in the aftermath of a "shutdown."

Whatever other effects it may have (and to the extent that it has any effects at all), the "government shutdown" ultimately strangles the process of governance only in those areas where there is some measure of a democratic process. In this sense, what is "shut down" is governance that involves those who are governed, and what is strengthened is governance that involves only the governors.