D. Clyde Benson II
Service · Accountability · Independent Judgment
Civic Participation
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Tennessee State and Federal Primary Election
Thursday, August 6, 2026
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A Philosophy of Government
A Quote That Reflects My Beliefs
Government is essential, but government must remain accountable to the citizens it serves. This exchange between Johnny Carson and Ronald Reagan expresses an important part of my political philosophy.
“When I mentioned that I thought most people were not apathetic, I think they're confused, basically, because you hear intelligent people from both political parties or in the middle, conservatives and liberals, and they all seem to have different answers as to what is going wrong in the country.
Some people say, ‘Well, let's let the government spend billions of dollars,’ and then other people say, ‘No, no more federal spending. Let's give the tax rebates.’ Then the other intelligent people say, ‘No tax rebates; we've got to do this and do that.’
So everybody is confused. How do you see the thing? How are we going to get out of this?”
“Well, Johnny, I think one of the things is that people keep looking to government for the answer, and government's the problem.
A moment ago you asked, you know, about people feeling not only confused but low and down in America. First of all, the American people, if they would just take a little inventory and look around, you triple our troubles, and we're better off than any other people on earth.
And we've asked so much of government, and we've gotten in the habit over the last 40 years of thinking that government has the answers.
There's very little that government can do as efficiently and as economically as the people can do themselves. And if government would shut the doors and sneak away for about three weeks, we'd never miss them.
Our biggest problem is that we have built a permanent structure of government—federal, state, and local—the permanent employees, and they've come to the place that they actually determine policy in this country more than does the Congress of the United States.
There are 14 and a half million public employees in the United States. That's quite a voting bloc. And the bureaus and agencies—not in Washington—I heard you talking earlier about some of the research programs.
Well, there was a senator the other day, and he took up some pages of the Congressional Record. He was doing the same thing you were, listing all these crazy research programs and how much they were costing, and wound up his speech by introducing his own. He wants a study and a research of Transcendental Meditation.
So, you know, there's a state senator in Michigan, and he just found out the other day they got a $93,000 study on whether chipmunks are bad for you. And he said that as a fourth-generation chipmunk eater, he figured that he could tell you how for 93 cents you would find the answer to that.
What would you say if I told you about one study in which this was called the demography of happiness? And in this study, the government found out that young people are happier than old people. And they found out that people that earn more are happier than people that earn less. And they found out that well people are happier than sick people.
This was $249,000 to find out it's better to be rich, young, and healthy than old, poor, and sick.”