Public Service Humbug

Brandon Arnold, director of government affairs at the Cato Institute, is not getting into the spirit of Public Service Recognition Week. In a piece entitled "Happy Bureaucrat Week" on National Review Online, he writes that the whole idea "reveals Congress’s skewed view of the importance of bureaucrats, and by extension, the government." That government is big, expensive, and ineffective, Arnold says. Even its heroes -- whistleblowers -- wouldn't be needed if the rest of the bureaucrats were doing their jobs properly. He won't even concede that civil servants are drawn to their work by a sense of civic duty and patriotism. "I would guess," he writes, "that many work for the federal government because the pay is pretty good and the job security excellent."