Jayand
Your post made me think of ostriches and head-in-sand.
Another thought was loaves and butter. The polititians these days seem to behave like ostriches and only see what they want to see, and deny everything they don't!
Equally, they never seem to give the MOD/NHS/Police (or whatever) enough "butter" to properly cover all the slices in the "loaf". Nor will they cut the size of the loaf to match the available butter......call me cynical but I think it has always been thus, only thing is that we never seem to learn from past mistakes.
For my part, I believe that there are some responsibilities that only the State must do and that it can only ignore at its peril and that includes defence. Many of the other "responsibilities" such as pensions/welfare/social services etc. could (and some say should) be the responsibility of the individual citizen. Where you draw the line depends on what kind of politics you believe in, and (so far thankfully) we live in a free country.
MB