The Framers embraced government provided services.

It never occurred to me that it would have to be repeated, much less come as a shock, that our country was founded on the assumption that the government would be the source of services needed by all. But Mark Brown, holder of the Newton D. Baker/Baker and Hostetler Chair at Capital University School of Law, fills us in on precisely this history, explaining that the Founding Fathers “believed that ‘essential’ services should be provided by government to the public at large for little or no remuneration. The costs of these services would be shared by the whole.” I’m not sure I agree with Brown’s characterization of this approach to governance as “socialism,” but I suppose he’s only deferring to the debased and a-historical way that term is being thrown around these days.