Re “Federal food benefits and preschool aid to run dry starting Saturday if shutdown continues” (Oct. 27): Perhaps a government shutdown is a good opportunity to rethink how many things we want to rely on government to “provide” for us. And I use quotes there because, in reality, government has no power to provide us with anything, it only has the power to restrict our ability to pursue better alternatives. And when we get used to having government “provide” us with “free” things over the course of decades, we gradually lose our ability to imagine what those better alternatives could be. This is true at any level of government, regardless of which political gang is in power, regardless of which side of the ocean we come from.
— Bryan Yingst, San Diego