What We’re Talking About When We Talk About Big Government

[Geee]

Pajamas Media:

Last week’s largest domestic, non-security focused storyline left the public consciousness without significant — or sufficient — spotlighting. The General Accountability Office, or GAO, found a massive amount of overlapping and even duplicative programs amongst federal agencies. The GAO did not release a figure regarding the total amount of such waste, but Senator Tom Coburn — who pushed for the report to be conducted — estimated that the report identified between $100 billion and $200 billion in redundancy. Coburn’s figure does not include spending that is neither duplicative nor overlapping but simply ridiculous, as judged by rational men, and as such the actual figure of federal program waste is quite more disgusting.

Conservatives — Originalists — speak of Big Government always: an aversion to it is deservedly the driving intellectual thesis behind conservatism. We despise Big Government, more than anything, and I can’t emphasize strongly enough that I don’t believe the left has any clue why. They have theories about guns and fear, psychological weakness, bigotry, and the like, and these are all weak arguments against Big Government, which makes them easy to dismiss and continue to be a leftist. They are not, of course, our arguments. There is a disconnect between what we say, what we mean when we protest Big Government and what we are thought to mean by our political opposition.

Fighting Big Government is not just about Don’t Tread on Me, although it is much about that; it is not just about national security, though it is fractionally about that. Perhaps we can transmit a better explanation via this GAO report and the below examination of the actual agencies of our current government, or I hope we can, and then I’d like to ask a question of the non-conservatives, because conservatives also do not understand a key plank of the left and the West would benefit from a clear answer.