The Goldilocks question
by Tom Sullivan
The phrase "big government" scrolled across the screen again the other day and got me thinking about how effectively the right has been in programming Americans to believe that any government at all is the ever-execrable big government of the GOP's daily rantings. A little over a year ago, Gallup reported that 72 percent of Americans believe big government is a greater threat than big business or big labor.
Yet, writing at the Daily Beast, Matt Lewis warned fellow conservatives that big businesses that put profit margins ahead of principle are at best strange bedfellows for the right. He warns, it's best not to trust anyone who's trying to sell you something:
I think it’s time that social conservatives also realize that big business isn’t their friend, either. My theory is that there are essentially two groups of people you have to be wary of: big government and big business. Conservatives have typically obsessed over the former, while attempting to co-opt the latter.
When Ronald Reagan declared that government is the problem he might as well have delivered the message on stone tablets from Mount Sinai. Those who beatified Saint Ronnie use the phrase big government as if there is no other kind. Thus, when conservatives control the reins of power, they begin obsessively dismantling the America built by those who came before them. So obsessively, in fact, that it is fair to ask how they will know when they are done. When is it time to put down the sledge hammers?
I like to pose the Goldilocks question:
How much government is too big, how much government is too small, and how much government is just right?
For the Scott Walkers and the Sam Brownbacks and the Pat McCrorys and the John Kasichs and the Ricks Snyder and Scott, this is not a trivial question. Since a "right-sized" government does not seem to exist in their universe, these are questions the right seems completely unprepared to address. Asking the question generally leaves them with their mouths hanging open.
Originalists among the T-Party typically fall back on Article 1, Section 8 enumerated powers in the Constitution. Of course, there is no Air Force in there — it's neither an Army nor a Navy. Therefore, no satellites, no telecommunications, no GPS. (Sorry, fishermen.) No system of lake, river, coastal, and aeronautical aids to navigation. They're not exactly military, nor law enforcement, nor commerce — and there's not really a market for trade in buoys, range markers, lighthouses, radio beacons, and air traffic control. No interstate highway system in Article 1, Section 8 either.
We ought to demand that our friends on the right define what their anti-big-government utopia looks like. Paint us a picture. Compare and contrast the life we live today with the one you promise your policies will provide. How about you start, Sam Brownback?
If you believe the lives we live right now are manacled by big, bad government, what would you demolish? What should go away? How much smaller should the military be? Is half a million installations worldwide too big? Is nearly 900 overseas bases too big? Would the Founders have considered that big government? Is Social Security big government? What's your plan for demolishing it? Do you propose privatizing the interstate highways? Should there be tolls on all of them?
And no, no more abstract blather about more freedom and more choices and fewer taxes. Paint us a picture. Describe for us, in detail, what your small-government utopia will look like in day-to-day, physical terms. Lowly fiction writers can do that.
How much government is too big, how much government is too small, and how much government is just right?