Big Government born of the GOP and Dems, both

by Susan Marie Kovalinsky | September 1, 2009 at 03:47 pm

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It seems I cannot avoid hearing right wing pundits hailing Thomas Paine's Common Sense and the like as their own treatises. The followers of Glen Beck and Michael Savage et al do not seem to understand that these writings can be used against Republicans, especially Ronald Reagen. They are so fond of quoting Reagen's jingle - "The most frightening words you can hear are, 'I'm from the government, and I am here to help' ." - all the while not understanding that Reagen expanded big government by 90%. He also launched a huge war on drugs with its ensuing invasion of private homes and cars and emminent domain and governmental seizure of land and property - not to mention the explosion of mandatory rehab facilities - and he must have laughed to himself on many an occassion. He was also for big business and the corporate sector: Ergo,for universal, global world order, moreso than any president that preceded him: All the talk of Main Street, USA was just that, talk.

W. Bush, too, was about as Jeffersonian as Hillary: He waged war in foreign, far flung places, to protect big oil and pharmaceutical corporate interests: This is called Big Government. The America of Bush and Cheney was not a return to the Jeffersonian ideal of a quiet pastoral republic of free "yeomen" and gentlemen farmers: It was a vast, borderless, global, multicultural and vastly corporate machine. "One World Order" is an understatement. The Patriot Act is Government; The Office of Homeland Securtiy , the Transportation Security Administration is government; "No Child Left Behind" which federally regulated kindergarten is government : All of these things which now have the right scared senseless of a Barack Obama "fascist" (ha!, the hypocrisy is stunning) take-over arise from an expanded infrastructure put in place by an Republican administration. These people on the right howling about the founding fathers and Thomas Paine have miscalculated where it matters most.

And it was the Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee who voted to police Internet gambling, as though adults could not be trusted with their own money. Party of small government; I think not.

And while we are at it, what do people think the expansion of the sex offender's registry is? That is governmental control. At one time we differentiated between true pedophilia and , say, a 24 year old teacher in love with a 15 year old, but no more: All are fodder for the expanded registry machine and its annexed industry and army of probation officers. And no one speaks out. Same with Driving While Intoxicated checkpoints and its probation with thousands of stipulations, and enforced community service and rehab: It is all big government , spread across the nation and taking control. It may begin as municipal and state by state, but it is picked up all over and sets its precedents and then becomes more national and uniform and all of it has been expanding for decades: Family courts, juvenile courts; beach and park and highway patrols and radars; pet laws and Amber Alerts and smoking bans, condo regulations and a vast network of social workers and supervisory boards and environmental and building regulatory boards , mushrooming and expanding in all directions and growing as never before : Government, the presence of government vastly expanded, a myriad of committees become an army of law: Regulations piled high, heaped up upon one another, turning the country into a vast Department of Motor Vehiles-esque Orwelian nightmare. In short, more laws than seems possible for a free democracy to have. It was a bipartisan project: Both parties have been big government, excessively so, and for a long time. Anyone who thinks otherwise is seriously deluded. "That government governs best which governs least" is such a thing of the past it isn't funny: It went by in the night, a long time ago: We are saturated with officials and laws and Thomas Paine would not be able to bear with either party: He would flee, along with John Galt, to the wilds.