KINDER'S COMMENTARY: DEVOLUTION: SEEKING TO GIVE AWAY GOVERNMENT POWER

I am proud to take this opportunity to congratulate two women, both Democratic nominees whose gubernatorial appointments I sponsored at the request of Gov. Carnahan, for their elevation to head their respective boards in state government. I refer to Karen Hendrickson of Southeast Hospital, recently elected head of the state board of nursing, and former Rep. Betty Hearnes of Charleston, elected by her peers to chair the state board of mental health.

Karen is longtime friend of our family and a highly educated professional colleague of my father's. Mrs. Hearnes proved a worthy and honorable opponent in my senate race three years ago. Mrs. Hearnes has long been active in the mental health field and headed the Autism Society of Missouri. Both are hardworking, diligent and well-informed public servants who will do us proud.

Where mental health is concerned, we can always do more. Certainly organizations such as the Community Counseling Center and the Association for Retarded Citizens help keep me and other lawmakers informed on needed improvements. But we have come a long way from the days, 35 years ago, when my predecessor, Sen. A.M. Spradling, pioneered legislative efforts that brought Missouri mental health services out of the dark ages.

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Having said that there is a role for government in mental health, other comments are in order as well. The great revolution under way now in Washington, D.C. is one of the devolution of power. Devolution is a fancy word meaning, in this context, to "send back." Thus the Republicans who won power in last fall's congressional elections are distinguished from most such winners over the last 60 years by this salient fact: Having won temporary custody of much governmental authority, they seek to give that power away. That's right: The great struggle under way in our nation's capital today will decide whether power can be successfully devolved out of the national capital and back to the states and localities.

Or, as former education secretary Bill Bennett eloquently states the matter: "We Republicans seek a devolution of power from the federal government to the states, from the states to cities and counties, and from all three to the individual and to the family."

This is a change in course worthy of the term "revolution." For 60 years, as government's power has expanded so enormously, Americans have gotten used to hiring bureaucrats, especially federal bureaucrats, to "solve" all our social and economic problems. This trend has been typified by the liberal mindset that said to us all, "You name me a problem, I'll create a bureaucracy."

It is this grand, 60-year experiment that can fairly be said to have failed. Quick: Where would you think a drug problem can be more usefully addressed: in a fancy government treatment program featuring licensed counselors and costing $600 per day, or in humble, private, work-oriented, famously cost-effective Teen Challenge, at $25 per day?

Americans, fitfully to be sure, are moving sharply toward a recovery of vital truths: of what some scholars have called "the first things." Among these is the truism, stressed by the Founding Fathers and by such as President Woodrow Wilson and Lord Acton, the great historian of liberty, that the history of freedom is the history of restraining the power of government.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.