Distrust of government is a tradition going back to our founding. “I am not a friend to a very energetic government,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison. “It is always oppressive.”It would be nice if these newly-shared concerns opened a path forward to solutions such as shrinking the size and power of the government -- to include the police agencies. We could even have fewer laws!
As a result, the founders carefully limited the scope and power of the federal government. Since then, conservatives have continued to be skeptical of strong government and big government programs.... But in the last century, liberal progressives have celebrated the expansion of the federal government and its growing power. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a champion of the Left, who transformed the size and function of the federal government, specifically the executive branch, when the Brownlow Committee recommended the creation of the Executive Office of the President in 1937. (Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, was criticized when he replaced the president’s singular secretary with four aides.) Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, lauded by the Left, dramatically increased the role that the federal government played in Americans’ daily lives.
Under the administration of democrat Lyndon Johnson, federal programs (and their influence and power) expanded again, with “Great Society” initiatives such as Medicare, Medicaid, federal involvement in education, and public housing programs. Certain bureaucratic failures of these programs aside, the Great Society posed another reach by the federal government into Americans’ lives.
Today, a man who was almost the Democratic presidential nominee (twice) advocates for dramatically expanding the power of the federal government. Sen. Bernie Sanders has plans for the nanny state to become the provider of higher education, housing, healthcare, child care, and even high-speed internet. He also wants to erase the constitutional right to bear arms, and plans to pay for his excessive programs by taxing Americans.
For the last hundred years, the Left has been the standard-bearer for the growth of government. And suddenly, they’re reaping the results. They’re horrified at a strong federal government and its power to police its constituents. On behalf of limited-government conservatives: welcome to the club.
Concerns about Government Power
Some of us have been here for a while, as Ellen Reynolds at the Federalist notes.
[The Left is] horrified at a strong federal government and its power to police its constituents.
ReplyDeleteHorror acting. The Left has not changed its direction at all, viz., the statements and promises of the 35,468 (D) Presidential candidates in the primaries.
It would be nice if these newly-shared concerns opened a path forward to solutions such as shrinking the size and power of the government....
ReplyDeleteThat would require the Left to be honest--they are not, no matter how heart-felt or consistently held their position or how well-intended they claim it to be. Their socialist ideology and their 18th century monarchist/modern liberal Big Government goal for implementing their ideology are each and severally fundamentally dishonest, reducing, as they do, man to subject of the State--which is to say, subjects of other men.
It's not possible to accept that the self-styled Smartest Ones don't know this, hence their fundamental dishonesty.
Eric Hines
Conservatives lost the debate about the size of government in about 2002. The debate is not about the size of government but how the benefits and costs are distributed.
ReplyDeleteConservatives lost the debate about the size of government in about 2002.
ReplyDeleteThat's defeatist. We haven't lost anything yet. We're not dead.
Eric Hines
True, you all are not dead. Neither were the people being shipped to concentration camps, in WW2, when they peacefully surrendered arms and went into lockdown on those cattle cars. They were not dead... yet.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is very difficult to get back your power and fight a war, after sleeping through half of it or voluntarily giving away your power.
Trump and Q are wild cards. If HRC had been President or McCain... think about what would have happened with these events.
People are talking about the "Left" in the same vein as I did so many years ago, but that paradigm itself is obsolete. The threat has never been the "Leftist alliance". THey are just goons or fodder. They don't matter. THey never did.