The American conservative movement has long been in love with the idea of small government – so small you can “flush it down the toilet.” This has always struck me as odd. After all, we all learned in our elementary school civics classes about our representative democracy, our evolution from great European schools of political thought, our ability to govern according to the “rule of law”, and especially our enfranchisement through the voting process. We, the people, are the government. Why would we want to flush ourselves down a toilet, I wondered?
I mean, I do get it, actually. If I am a rancher in Montana, the government is a revenooer coming after my hard-earned savings with nothing to show for it in return, so I truly believe. If I am a Wall Street banker, the government is my adversary, taking all my paper profits, keeping me from bilking the marks, just because I can. If I am a sovereign citizen in a Southern town, the government is just giving away free stuff to poor people who don’t look anything like me, for reasons. I can think of lots of rationalizations why powerful special interests and the uninformed would see the government from their limited perspective and would prefer to avoid conflict with the part of the government they hate.
But how about the rest of us? The rational, hard-working, objective Americans who actually think about stuff. The people who live and work in cities or small towns and come into contact with the government on a personal basis every day in many different ways. Why would the average American want a small government?
So I started writing down all the ways the US government or the state or local government is using my tax dollars and returning value to me personally. I put together the list below of each of the ways the government provides real services for me – I’m sure each of you could think of a few dozen more. And I started thinking about whether I really want to live in a world where the government services I receive are cut back or are no longer available, because of that toilet thing.
So - Big government or small government? Taxes or no taxes?? Do you prefer roads or no roads? Teachers or no teachers? Mail or no mail? Unemployment insurance or brother-in-law’s couch? Firemen or bucket brigade? Social Security or the cookie jar? Take a look at the list, I think the argument speaks for itself.
Edit 9/21: Photo removed by request.