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I see a lot of people chanting about how they dont like big government and how terrible big government is, yet nobody really seems to see that we actually LIKE big government.
Libertarians want less government; government should only protect the rights of citizens! Except that someone to enforce the law to protect the rights of the individual and the government needs power to do that. So you need to give power to the government that it may effectively protect the rights of the individual.
What's more, I've seen many people identify as libertarian and claim this massive amount of support for it....but the polls dont really ever show it. The most a Libertarian candidate for president has ever received in terms of votes is 1.1% and the actual membership of the Libertarian party is less than 200,000.
This tells me that people may believe libertarian, but when it comes time to actually vote, they vote Democrat or Republican. Im sure there are people who vote Democrat or Republican with a libertarian mindset, but because our tendency is towards more government I'm less inclined to believe that.
I say that we want big government because the progression of politics in the US is towards bigger government. Granted we are slower about it than other countries, but we're still going that direction and it's at a consistent rate. If this was genuinely something that people didn't want, they wouldn't vote for the people who expanded the government or they would recall representatives who said they wouldn't expand the government but do anyways.
We ALL want big government, but we want big government to act like our own personal attack dog; we want it to work for us then go sit in the side yard when it's done and stay out of our way. People get bent out of shape when big government starts working for someone else.
I see a lot of people chanting about how they dont like big government and how terrible big government is, yet nobody really seems to see that we actually LIKE big government.
Libertarians want less government; government should only protect the rights of citizens! Except that someone to enforce the law to protect the rights of the individual and the government needs power to do that. So you need to give power to the government that it may effectively protect the rights of the individual.
What's more, I've seen many people identify as libertarian and claim this massive amount of support for it....but the polls dont really ever show it. The most a Libertarian candidate for president has ever received in terms of votes is 1.1% and the actual membership of the Libertarian party is less than 200,000.
This tells me that people may believe libertarian, but when it comes time to actually vote, they vote Democrat or Republican. Im sure there are people who vote Democrat or Republican with a libertarian mindset, but because our tendency is towards more government I'm less inclined to believe that.
I say that we want big government because the progression of politics in the US is towards bigger government. Granted we are slower about it than other countries, but we're still going that direction and it's at a consistent rate. If this was genuinely something that people didn't want, they wouldn't vote for the people who expanded the government or they would recall representatives who said they wouldn't expand the government but do anyways.
We ALL want big government, but we want big government to act like our own personal attack dog; we want it to work for us then go sit in the side yard when it's done and stay out of our way. People get bent out of shape when big government starts working for someone else.
If we can ever dismantle the corrupt duopoly of the two-party winner-takes-all system, you'll see a lot more libertarians come out to vote libertarian.
You may as well make the same argument against Greeners or Reformers.
No, we do NOT all want big government. Not in the slightest.
I don't give a **** what 'conservatives' or 'liberals' want. What I know is what *I* want. And it's decidedly NOT a big government.Big is an arbitrary and relative term. In the grand scheme of things, the difference between American liberals and American conservatives is not very large. They each agree on a fairly large set of things the government should be doing, and each has some ideas for additional things the government should be doing that the other disagrees with. Conservatives want the government to stay away from our guns but tell us who we can marry. Liberals want the government to not tell us who we can marry but tell us which guns we can own. Which one wants a "bigger" government? How the hell do you measure the "size" of a government anyway?
Wrong again. No, we do NOT all want a large government. You can only speak yourself.We do all want a large government.
Someone please define "big" government. Both quantitatively and qualitatively.
The US government. :mrgreen:
The US government. :mrgreen:
We ALL want big government, but we want big government to act like our own personal attack dog; we want it to work for us then go sit in the side yard when it's done and stay out of our way. People get bent out of shape when big government starts working for someone else.
you have it rightI'd like to throw in just my two cents:
There seems to be much confusion about what actually is "big government". Many people claim they are in favor of small government, yet many get inconsistent when it comes to the exceptions (and no, I don't want to accuse anybody here, I don't know you well enough yet anyway to know, so it's just a general observation).
Some focus much more on the government's role in civil liberties, and they don't want their individualism being regulated: "Big government" then is perceived as a "daddy state", an authoritarian Leviathan that regulates lifestyle, that regulates what consenting adults do in their bedrooms, what women are supposed to do with their bodies, if you may or may not have the right to decide what to do with your body by criminalizing drug use, and so on. This "daddy state" meddles into your privacy by wiretapping you even without a court warrant against you, by giving NSA and CIA extralegal powers to deal with mere suspects (who are supposed to be treated innocent until their guilt is proven). But often, there is a blind spot when it comes to property rights. Taxes and thus state access to private property is considered less grave, as long as it serves a "common good". Apparently, their fondness of small government only covers individualist lifestyle, but not individual property rights.
Then there is the opposite. There are people who despise not the "daddy state", but the "nanny state". They are outraged about a violation of private property rights by the state, and when it spends much, takes much in taxes, it's the ultimate horror. Yet they turn a blind eye on the "daddy state" kind of "big government". They cry bloody murder when the state rises taxes, but turn a blind eye when there is bloated spending on the military (while a big military is definitely a symptom of very big government!), when the state legislates collectivist Christian morals or when the state gives agencies like the CIA the power to detain people without access to legal assistance or fair trial. All that authoritarian big government "daddy state" is nice and fine, as long as nobody takes their property.
Just that nobody gets me wrong: I don't think both sides are necessarily illegitimate. There may be good reasons to focus on either aspect, while being more lenient on the other. I just wonder how coherent it still is to claim to be in favor of "small government" in that case.
And of course, I am sure there are also many who are neither in favor of "nanny state" nor "daddy state". Genuine libertarians, who are just as much opposed to government interference on property rights, as civil liberties and individualism. Just it seems they often remain an ignored faction in the two-party-system, and "small government" often becomes an empty battle term everybody seems to fight for, yet those who actually support it most are often ignored.
I may be wrong. Was just an idea that came to me when I read this thread's topic. What do you think?
This forum does not demographically represent the U.S., so I would say that many people on the forum are sincere in there attack upon big government. However, the voting trends of the general populace are in favor of our current large scale programs. We have had decades to attack medicare or social security, and neither party has even considered it. Republicans may pay lip service to small government, but they haven't seriously attempted to cut major programs in more than 20 years. At the end up the day, they know that the elderly demographic is key, and they will tear you to pieces if you touch medicare. We have become entitled, and while Libertarians may fight their fight, the majority of the populace isn't with them.
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