Teabaggers and Neocons are fond of talking about “smaller government,” which is totally hypocritical of them, of course, because they are, by and large, in favor of a huge military intervening everywhere in the world, laws which tell people what they can or can’t smoke which
V for Vendetta, one of my favorite movies ever
necessitates a huge police, court and prison system and the Great Wall of Arizona project, whether it consists of underground electronic sensors (Rand Paul) or a huge concrete fence.
Nobody advocates “big government,” because that just sounds nasty and it is the stuff of all sci-fi dystopias from 1984 to The Handmaiden’s Tale.
What we actually need is government of the correct size. Big enough to do what needs to be done, small enough to not threaten individual rights. As scientists look for other planets, hoping eventually to find one that could support an intelligent species like ourselves, they focus their attention on the “goldilocks planets.” That is, not so close to their sun that they are burning hot, like Mercury and not so far away, like Uranus, Neptune or Pluto, that they are in the frozen depths of outer space. Not too hot, not too cold but just right, like the 3 bears’ porridge in the story of Goldilocks.
That’s the way I see government. A government that cannot provide schools for all children, which farms out its prison system to private contractors, which doesn’t have enough hospitals for all the sick people or that can’t keep the roads and bridges repaired is too small. A government which is looking for reasons to throw people in jail, or new wars to start so they can use up all of those fancy weapons, is too big.
So, I am not an advocate of big government or of small government. I am an advocate of a goldilocks government.
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