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> plenty of people who rail against "big government" support the drug war, while plenty of people who like redistribution are adamantly against it.* Because no

> plenty of people who rail against "big government" support the drug war, while plenty of people who like redistribution are adamantly against it.* Because no one actually cares about "big" or "small" government, they care about using the government to impose their beliefs on other people, whether those beliefs are conservative or liberal in nature. Both liberals and conservatives are actually for "big government", it's just that conservatives also lie about being for "small government". Liberals want the government to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, while conservatives want the government to wage war on drugs (read: ethnic minorities), other countries, women's rights, etc. But in the end, it's those with connections that are able to skim money off the top of all these transactions and laugh all the way to the bank. Obama allocated $607 billion for defense-related spending last Thursday - $30 billion more than was in the recent budget deal passed by Congress. So actually, the "liberals" are also supporting the military-industrial complex too.

hyperpape 13y ago
You can say that, but then you have to own up to the fact that the two dimensions of "bigness" are unrelated. The drug war and medicare/social security (to take two other big programs) are good or bad for entirely separate reasons. The fact is, when you say you want the government to be small, you are conflating things that there are different. There are different ways to be big or small, and they have different advantages and disadvantages.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  > you have to own up to the fact that the two dimensions of "bigness" are unrelated You're mistaken - they have much in common. In order to be a successful political party, what you have to do is find issues that (a) a lot of people deeply believe in on an emotional level and (b) can be addressed in such a way that you can redirect large sums of money into the pockets of 3rd parties in the process, who will then support the election campaigns of your politicians. Whether this happens through providing obscenely overpriced healthcare to Americans or through buying/using drones to extrajudicially murder and terrorize Yemeni wedding-goers is just a detail. We could debate until the end of time how much value either of these initiatives actually provides to the American citizenry, but that's a completely separate issue (and not one that the vast majority of politicians give a rat's ass about).

hyperpape 13y ago

You can say that, but then you have to own up to the fact that the two dimensions of "bigness" are unrelated. The drug war and medicare/social security (to take two other big programs) are good or bad for entirely separate reasons. The fact is, when you say you want the government to be small, you are conflating things that there are different. There are different ways to be big or small, and they have different advantages and disadvantages.

w1ntermute 13y ago
> you have to own up to the fact that the two dimensions of "bigness" are unrelated You're mistaken - they have much in common. In order to be a successful political party, what you have to do is find issues that (a) a lot of people deeply believe in on an emotional level and (b) can be addressed in such a way that you can redirect large sums of money into the pockets of 3rd parties in the process, who will then support the election campaigns of your politicians. Whether this happens through providing obscenely overpriced healthcare to Americans or through buying/using drones to extrajudicially murder and terrorize Yemeni wedding-goers is just a detail. We could debate until the end of time how much value either of these initiatives actually provides to the American citizenry, but that's a completely separate issue (and not one that the vast majority of politicians give a rat's ass about).