In this time of New Year’s resolutions, here’s one for California: Stick to the basics. Unfortunately, our elected leadership believe that any problem needs a government solution. This mindset has caused California to lose focus away from important functions that are properly within the purview of government.

Here’s a short list of matters that our public institutions can and should address. Quickly forgotten, especially among modern progressive politicians, is that the first responsibility of government is to preserve liberty.

Second, no one disputes that government has a responsibility to protect its citizens. At the national level, we have a formidable military force and intelligence agencies to counter threats to the nation from foreign interests. At the local level, citizens expect their cities and counties to provide adequate police and fire protection.

Third, Americans also believe that education is a public function, especially in the primary grades. But here again, there is a wide divergence of views on the best way to educate our children. Public charter schools offer an independent alternative to established district schools. Quality education is available from private schools, and homeschooling is becoming more popular. This trend is a direct indictment of the failure of public education in many places.

There are more areas where direct government involvement is warranted. Public health, especially in the era of a pandemic, requires some government direction. That does not entail, however, heavy-handed edicts unmoored from legitimate legal authority.

At the state level, our elected leaders and bureaucrats have failed miserably to deliver on the most basic of government functions. The fraud in the disbursement of unemployment benefits has reached $2 billion. And our leaders can’t blame that level of malfeasance on the emergency nature of the pandemic.

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