On the Lincoln thread below, I see that an expected skirmish has broken out between conservatives who say government agencies (especially under Obama) want to dictate what we can watch and read and believe and so forth, and liberals trying to argue this down.
I don't know who I'll convince with this post, but I just want to write in support of your average bureaucrat, who works hard for not really much pay and who is typically very disciplined about trying to remain nonpartisan.
I know several such people. They are serious and dedicated folks. They're in the jobs they're in because of their expertise and are usually sacrificing income to be there.
And they are very serious about staying out of politics. I've chatted with Justice Department lawyers who you just knew were basically liberals, but if you started to talk about politics and Karl Rove or whatever (this was back in the Bush days), they got nervous and they made it clear that they didn't make political judgments. They work through Democratic and Republican administrations, and they have a code to follow, and they follow it.
Today, we live in an environment such that bureaucrats who want simply to do their jobs are pegged as socialists by definition; after all, they're government, and if they try to perform the tasks assigned them, they are big government made flesh, and hence evil. It's patently insane. Read kattw at 4:03 for sound wisdom on this question.
Our civic bloodstream is just so full of poisonous lies now that stating a simple truth like this, or a bureaucrat simply trying to carry out her job as the law says, is a matter of contention. It's like having to reargue whether the earth is flat or round. Or how old the earth is. Oops, sorry I brought that one up...
