Small government
“”We conservatives believe that the government is bad, and we have got the candidates to prove it.
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| —P.J. O'Rourke |
Small Government™ (pronounced "govmint," "gubmint," or "gummint") is a meme, often referring to what some conservatives and libertarians believe is the ideal form of government as set forth by the Founding Fathers. It has become a Teabagger mantra over the past few years. Scholars have yet to come to a consensus as to the exact meaning of Small Government™, or if it means anything at all.
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[edit] Just what in the world is Small Government?
[edit] The founders' intent
Proponents of Small Government™ claim that we must return to the ideals of the Founding Fathers™ and the Constitution and that the founders' intent can clearly be discerned by reading the plain text of the Constitution. Apparently, the founders all agreed that there was only one true way to govern: low taxes and no regulations. Of course, even a simple grade-school knowledge of history should put to rest the notion that the Founding Fathers were some kind of unitary hive mind that agreed on everything (some even liked central banking and censoring the press!). While the role of the government was in general much smaller before the 20th century, there are many examples of not-very-small-government programs that the government initiated during this period. For example, land grants that encouraged homesteading and railroad construction in the western US, the construction of canals in key waterways, instituting the beginnings of the modern public school system, the creation of a modern sanitation and sewer system, and, of course, freeing the slaves. The era of Small Government™ is, shall we say, romanticized mythology. And let's not even get into the 20th century, in which the government created the thing you're using to read these words. (For extra Teabagger irony value, the participants of the real Tea Party were actually protesting a tax cut.)
[edit] Norquistopia
Okay, so what in hell does Small Government™ mean then if not what the founders intended? Another definition is given by Grover Norquist: Bringing government spending down to 8.5% of GDP.[1] Why? because that's what it was at the turn of the 20th century. Obviously, Norquist's number is transparently arbitrary and innumerate. Say the economy went through a massive boom, bringing spending below 8% of GDP. Norquist's plan would then have us increase spending!
And what about other countries? No other country spends 8.5% of its GDP per annum in the world (alas, no Norquistopia exists). However, according to Norquist's standards, Afghanistan looks like a hot spot to move to considering it spends about 9% of its GDP. Denmark, though, is probably some Soviet rathole since it spends at close to 60% of its GDP.[2]
However, 100% of people named Grover Norquist agree that Small Government™ is most simply defined as All That is Good and Holy.
[edit] The night watchman
At least minarchist libertarians have the decency to give us a clear-cut definition of Small Government™, but they often prefer to call it the "night watchman state," which Robert Nozick expounded on in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. This is simply a skeletal form of government where only negative rights are protected by keeping only coercive acts of violence or theft illegal. The government would largely be composed of just police and a judiciary in order to enforce the law. This minarchist view is common within the libertarian movement, being espoused by writers such as Ayn Rand. However, it doesn't really square with the views of the politicians who both use the term and are mainstream enough to appear on TV like Sarah Palin.
[edit] It's whatever Big Government isn't!
Expert political scientists have hypothesized that Small Government™ is simply whatever isn't Big Government™. Using the Teabaggers as a representative sample of Small Government™ proponents, we find that things not considered to be Big Government™ include:
- The Patriot Act
- The War on (Some) Drugs
- Securing the border
- Keeping the gays from getting married.
- Medicare and Medicaid.[3]
- Mandating invasive, uncomfortable, expensive, and medically unnecessary procedures (as long as such mandates only apply to women).
In fairness to the libertarians (excepting the Neal Boortz/Instapundit types), they have been consistently against these policies, as government is the handiwork of Satan.
Some research suggests that Big Government™ is actually socialism in disguise...or something.[4] Friedrich von Hayek asserted in The Road to Serfdom that even the slightest dose of Big Government™ would prove deadly, leading us down the slippery slope to an inevitable communo-fascist autocracy. Not shockingly, most citizens of first world nations don't believe that they are living under totalitarian regimes. However, others think that they are just stupid sheeple.
What is generally understood to be the case by many scholars in the political field, though, is that there is a Manichean division between two types of government: Small and Big, with the former being good and the latter being bad. All political issues can be reduced to this dichotomy.
[edit] The Nanny State
The Nanny State™ is Big Government™ with added nag. British MP Iain Macleod allegedly discovered the existence of the Nanny State™ in 1965.[5]
What does a nanny do? Most likely, she keeps you from eating sweets before dinner, looking at naughty magazines, or staying up past your bedtime. Hillary Clinton, for example, is a Big Government™ Democrat who thinks the government needs to keep all that nasty sex out of our children's violent video games.[6] Orrin Hatch, on the other hand, is a Small Government™ Republican who thinks "obscenity" should be illegal, which is not "nanny" in any way, not at all.[7] Seeing Janet Jackson's exposed breast on live TV made Republican Heather Wilson very, very angry.[8]
Wingnuts claim the very existence of welfare undermines The American Dream by creating a populace of dependent welfare queens, as the government will be your "nanny" from cradle to grave. While there will be "free riders" in any system, in fact, fraud is not rampant in US welfare programs, many welfare recipients also hold down full-time jobs, and don't spend their entire lives on welfare.[9] These benefit scroungers simply aren't doing their work: Bilking the government out of the maximum amount of cash. Maybe they ought to quit their jobs and get some Matthew Lesko books!
[edit] Conservative Nanny State
Socialist Economist Dean Baker argues in his book The Conservative Nanny State that conservatives actually support policy that is Big Government™ and anti-free market. He asserts that conservative stances on tort "reform," patent laws, bankruptcy laws, and interest rate policy creates a conservative Nanny State™ that is intended to benefit (yet another big) Big Business™ and the wealthy. Many claim this to be impossible.
[edit] Rage against The Man
Hippies like to talk about how they are always being kept down by The Man, maaaaaaan. Similarly, Small Government™ proponents like to talk about "getting government off our backs" and "getting government out of the way," implying that if only Big Government™ could be done away with, it would leave space for good ol' American Ingenuity™ and The Protestant Work Ethic™ to lead us into a new golden age of American prosperity. Figuring out how this would be accomplished is left as an exercise for the reader. For this reason, a fringe group of Small Government™ theorists believe that Big Government™ and The Man™ may in fact be the same thing, leading them to conclude that many conservatives are in fact deep cover hippies.
[edit] Reaganism
The case of Ronald Reagan is one that still troubles many scholars in the Small Government™ field. Reagan was a Small Government™ conservative, yet he exploded the federal debt, bailed out Social Security, expanded defense programs, and expanded the War on Drugs. Scholars have yet to work out the Reagan paradox and it remains yet another puzzle to be solved by enterprising researchers.
[edit] Americans don't like it big
Many European snobs citizens claim that Americans like everything obnoxiously Big: Big Cars, Big Macs, Big Tracts of Land, etc. This is patently false. Every good American hates something Big. Moonbats hate Big Pharma™ and Big Oil™. Wingnuts hate Big Government™ and Big Science™. Real America™ is all about small-town values, small businesses, and giving the little guy his chance. Small is good, really! We don't know where all this Big stuff came from. It was like this when we found it, honest.
[edit] Big Society (Brits do like it big)
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has helped to reinvent the concept of Small Government™ in the minds of the British people through his Big Society™ program.[10] The Sunday Times remarked that it was "an impressive attempt to reframe the role of government and unleash entrepreneurial spirit."[11] Through this campaign, Cameron demonstrated his advanced knowledge of Small Government™ by repackaging it for the British public. Because the Brits are socialists, they love Big things, especially government. Thus, they simply cannot understand the benefits of Small Government™ (this is likely due to socialist indoctrination at state schools). Because all government is simply a sliding scale between Small and Big Government™, cuts in government programs aren't just making government smaller, they're making everything else bigger! Hence, the Big Society™!
[edit] See also
- Good old days, when government was much smaller
- Rugged individualism, how real men lived in the Age of Small Government™
- Starve the beast, an alleged method for the creation of Small Government™
[edit] External links
- Center for Small Government, for all your Small Government™ needs.
- What's a Big Government?
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ 15 Questions with Grover G. Norquist, The Harvard Crimson
- ↑ Government Spending as % of GDP
- ↑ Teabag activists have put a fresh new spin on the status of these entitlement programs as public, claiming that they, in fact, have nothing to do with government at all.
- ↑ Socialism and Big Government as Orwellian Doublespeak, This Magazine
- ↑ We Must Break Free From the Bully State, Scotsman
- ↑ Senator Clinton, Burned by Hot Coffee, Proposes Grand Theft of Free Speech, EFF
- ↑ Enforce federal laws on obscenity, Orrin Hatch in Deseret News
- ↑ Heather Wilson "Nipplegate" testimony
- ↑ Eight Welfare Myths, Anita Freeman
- ↑ Not to be confused with the Great Society™
- ↑ The big society, Sunday Times