When government stops governing

If you attend enough Aurora City Council meetings, you begin to notice something unsettling. The published agenda suggests the council has assembled to govern: to debate budgets, improve public safety, maintain infrastructure, encourage economic development, and solve the practical problems that affect nearly 400,000 residents. Too often, that isn’t what happens. Instead, the meeting becomes a contest of narratives. Ceremonial acknowledgments. Activist demands. Moral declarations. Symbolic resolutions. Public comment that often resembles political theater more than civic dialogue. Hours can be spent debating competing visions of justice before the council ever reaches the routine, but essential, work of governing. The problems waiting outside City Hall remain.

Aurora is not unique. It is simply Colorado’s clearest illustration of a transformation taking place across our state. Government is becoming less concerned with solving problems than with preserving ideological narratives about those problems. That distinction explains far more about Colorado’s current condition than the familiar debate between Republicans and Democrats.

James Madison understood something modern politics too often forgets. In Federalist No. 51, he famously wrote:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Madison’s insight was not merely that government is necessary. It was that government must be designed for imperfect human beings. Because people are capable of pride, self-interest, ambition, and self-deception, those entrusted with public power must be held accountable, not by the nobility of their intentions, but by the results of their decisions. That principle has quietly been reversed.

Governance begins by asking practical questions. Did the policy work? Did crime decline? Are children learning? Are neighborhoods safer? Did homelessness decrease? Are businesses investing? Did taxpayers receive measurable value?

Ideology asks different questions. Does this reinforce the narrative? Does it advance the cause? Does it demonstrate compassion? Does it satisfy the activists? Does it place us on the right side of history?

Governance measures outcomes. Ideology measures intentions. The difference is not philosophical. It is profoundly practical. It determines whether problems are solved, or simply managed. Over the past decade, Colorado has increasingly adopted a familiar governing pattern. First, a crisis is declared. Then a moral narrative is constructed. There are victims. There are oppressors. Government is presented as the indispensable solution. New programs are created. New regulations are adopted. Additional spending is approved. When the promised results fail to appear, or conditions deteriorate, the narrative itself is almost never questioned. Instead, failure becomes evidence that government simply has not done enough. The answer is more spending. More regulation. More bureaucracy. More planning. More intervention. Every failure becomes justification for expanding the very approach that failed.

We see this pattern across Colorado. Homelessness continues despite unprecedented public expenditures. Educational achievement struggles while bureaucratic systems continue to grow. Energy policy promises affordability and sustainability while families and businesses confront rising costs and increasing concerns about long-term reliability. Businesses quietly relocate while lawmakers respond with still more regulation. Public safety debates increasingly focus on ideological interpretations of policing while many citizens simply want safe neighborhoods. These are very different issues. Yet they reveal the same governing philosophy. Reality no longer evaluates the narrative. Reality is expected to conform to it. Thomas Sowell has spent decades warning against this way of thinking.

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

His point is unmistakable. Ideas should never become so precious that they are immune from evidence. When policymakers become more committed to preserving a theory than correcting its failures, ideology has replaced governance. This should concern every Coloradan, regardless of political affiliation.

The purpose of government is neither to validate our moral aspirations nor to perform our political virtues. Its purpose is far more practical, and far more important. Government exists to protect life, liberty, and property. It administers justice. It maintains public order. It provides the stable conditions under which free people, strong families, thriving businesses, churches, charities, schools, and civic organizations can flourish. Government cannot manufacture virtue. It cannot replace parents. It cannot create healthy communities. It cannot substitute for faith. It cannot legislate wisdom. And every time it attempts to do what rightly belongs to families, churches, schools, businesses, and voluntary associations, it weakens those institutions while expanding its own reach. That is not progress. It is mission creep. None of this is an argument against compassion, justice, or fairness. A free society requires all three. But they must be pursued through effective governance rather than ideological performance.

Good government asks difficult questions. Are fewer people homeless? Are fewer people addicted? Are children learning more? Are neighborhoods safer? Are businesses expanding? Are families becoming stronger? Are citizens becoming more self-governing? These are not partisan questions. They are governing questions. Because ultimately, citizens do not live inside political narratives. They live with political consequences.

Aurora matters because it offers Colorado an opportunity to recognize this pattern while there is still time to change course. Our state remains blessed with extraordinary people, abundant opportunity, and remarkable promise. But if Colorado is to flourish in the years ahead, we must recover a principle as old as the Republic itself.

Government should be judged not by the virtue it proclaims, but by the results it produces. History rarely remembers governments for the sincerity of their intentions. It remembers them for whether they governed well. Colorado deserves leaders who understand the difference.