Two Americas: one works, the other doesn't

Glenn Reynolds, AKA Instapundit, AKA the grandaddy of all bloggers, and arguably one of the most prolific and valuable contributors to the internet, has written an outstanding op-ed in today's USA Today. Here's the first part, but be sure to read it all:

There are two Americas, all right. There's one that works -- where new and creative things happen, where mistakes are corrected, and where excellence is rewarded. Then there's Washington, where everything is pretty much the opposite. That has been particularly evident over the past week or so. One America can launch rockets. The other America can't even launch a website. 

The silver lining to the Obamacare cloud (whose failure to launch after three years and billions of dollars of preparation makes Apple's iOS 7 "glitch" seem laughably insignificant) and to the federal government shutdown is that maybe, if we're lucky, the voters are going to take notice. Government can't do things nearly as well as the private sector can, and anyway, the government shouldn't even try. Perhaps more importantly, we are finding out that our economic life goes on just fine without the daily ministrations of the many millions of federal employees that are now officially considered to be non-essential. We should all be asking ourselves—just days after the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 16th Amendment authorized the income tax—whether our federal government is really worth one-fifth of our collective incomes, even though it almost cost us one-fourth just four years ago.

If we're lucky, Obamacare may prove to be the "tipping point" that finally marks the end of Big Government as we know it. Republicans are probably doing us a disservice by insisting that Obamacare be de-funded or postponed. Instead, they should just let it happen and let it fail spectacularly, because it is guaranteed to fail no matter what. Government of the size we have today has reached the limits of its effectiveness. Government is now too vast to be efficient, too vast to be controlled, and too vast to achieve all the many objectives of its constituents. Republicans would be wise to wait until the Democrats beg to have Obamacare postponed. Then perhaps we can have a proper dialogue on the subject.

If you don't read Glenn on a daily basis, you should.