The Right-Wing and 'Less Government'

[DinodudeEpic]

The most idiotic piece of historical revisionism I had ever come across. I mean, the Tea Party is rewriting the political spectrum so that the left-wing = more government, and right-wing = less government.

I have a question for the right-wingers...


Why do you want the government regulate gay marriage?
Why do you want government control over our abortion?
Why do you want the government to have the right to kill people(death penalty)?
Why do you want the government to wire-tap our phones? (PATRIOT Act)
Why do you want the government to regulate our trade union rights? (Wisconsin, Michigan)
Why do you want the government to subsidize corporations? (Democrats are guilty of this too, but I consider them to be centrists/right centrists more then anything else.)
Why do you want a huge government in the form of the military?
Why do you want a government that can override city governments? (Michigan)
Why do you want a government that controls our borders in a draconian way?

I'm sick of the less government argument. The US government has grown in size, but it seems that it also became more right wing in the process. I mean, REALLY! Social Democrats and Liberals seem to only want welfare programs (Some times for the Liberals. Both however are simply wanting to keep the welfare programs that are still around nowadays though) and economic regulations. Conservatives seem to control our personal lives.

So, what is left and right? Well, left and right came from the French Revolutionaries and the Monarchists respectively. So, left means anyone who roughly idealizes the core values of the French Revolution (Liberty, equality, fraternity) and right means anyone who roughly idealizes the core values of the Monarchists (Order, tradition, and authority)

(Sorry for posting this in a forum of leftists who probably already know this. I'm just fed up with the conservatives WHINING about how our government has grown lately when the country has been under conservative control for almost 30 years straight.)

[Property Is Robbery]

Why do you want the government regulate gay marriage?
Why do you want government control over our abortion?
Why do you want the government to have the right to kill people(death penalty)?
Why do you want the government to wire-tap our phones? (PATRIOT Act)
Why do you want the government to regulate our trade union rights? (Wisconsin, Michigan)
Why do you want the government to subsidize corporations? (Democrats are guilty of this too, but I consider them to be centrists/right centrists more then anything else.)
Why do you want a huge government in the form of the military?
Why do you want a government that can override city governments? (Michigan)
Why do you want a government that controls our borders in a draconian way?


First of all as a democratic socialist you support a larger government than even a neo-con like Reagan. Second they will respond in very predictable ways.

1)That doesn't make government bigger it just keeps the tradition and values of the American family alive.
2)That is baby killing! And we're against Planned Parenthood which would shrink the size of government.
3)We have to keep criminals [especially blacks] off our streets and away from our families. If that means killing them so be it.
4) The terrorists will get us! If you aren't a terrorist you don't have to worry
5)You're regulating free businesses. This country is supposed to have a free market and those damn unions have way too much power!
6)Many republicans don't advocate this but the ones that do would say "if we don't prop up our domestic businesses China will get us! You want to be a commie?!?
7)Because people are jealous of our freedom and freedom isn't free!
8) ?
9) Those damn illegal aliens are taking our jobs and our tax money!!

[hatzel]

I mean, the Tea Party is rewriting the political spectrum so that the left-wing = more government, and right-wing = less government.

I would maintain that there is little to no direct correlation between position on the left-right political spectrum and supported size of government. As PiR has pointed out, democratic socialists advocate a gargantuan government, as opposed to right minarchists etc.; in fact, in 'everyday' non-radical situations, that is, with social democrats as the furthest left you're going to get, it's not even that far-fetched a suggestion...

[Jimmie Higgins]

The underlying problem with these arguments is that it talks about "the state" as if states exist in the abstract, separate from the way society is organized (and who organizes it). So you could argue that feudalism had a much smaller states than any modern nation - but they were even MORE restrictive than most modern capitalist states.

Marx rebutted the Tea-Partiers and the crass US Libertarians 100 years ago when discussing the lessons of the Paris Commune:


"The Commune, made the catchword of all bourgeois revolutions, cheap government, a reality, by abolishing the two greatest sources of expenditure--the army and the officialdom."

[Jimmie Higgins]

(Sorry for posting this in a forum of leftists who probably already know this. I'm just fed up with the conservatives WHINING about how our government has grown lately when the country has been under conservative control for almost 30 years straight.)

True that. Ultimately I think we won't convince the core tea-party types through arguments - it would probably take a much larger social shift where people who might otherwise become attracted to these politics see a more viable and positive alternative. If there was a fighting labor movement with much more rank and file strength and democracy, then no one could argue that "unions are useless" or that "unions just take your money and give it to the democrats" - the role of unions as a line of defense for workers under capitalism would be much less murky and while some petty-bourgeois tea-party types might become even more polarized and reactionary against a fighting working class movement, many would have to reconsider the myths they have been handed and many many more fence-sitters would be drawn to our side and so the small numbers of radicalized reactionaries would be largely outnumbered anyway. If the working class folks who need and wanted a real viable healthcare system protested like the tea-party did against healthcare, hell if just union rank and file people mobilized like the right did, then we'd have universal healthcare now. But because the union leadership too its cues from the Democrats, they mobilized too little too late for a bullshit pro-insurance industry healthcare plan that most workers didn't understand or see the value by that time anyway.

Anyway, yeah I don't think we can really argue logically with tea-partiers because their politics are not really logically constant with what they claim their politics are about. The whine about a "Nanny State" when there are environmental regulations, but then also support police pulling over any Latino and asking for legal papers to find "illegals" - seat-belts are "big government" but they are silent about how the US has more people in prison per capita than any other country. Their stated politics are not constant because their real politics are basically two things: scapegoating people and fighting to prevent aid to poor or oppressed people and second, being the footsoldiers for whatever business wants at a given time. The "nanny state" isn't really about seat-belts or whatever other random things right-wing radio obsesses over, it's about making a case against putting any restrictions on business (and for example, the Koch brothers, oil billionaires, set up groups like AFP which mobilize people to stop regulation of the oil industry).

[Jose Gracchus]

The underlying problem with these arguments is that it talks about "the state" as if states exist in the abstract, separate from the way society is organized (and who organizes it).

This. Its idealist abstraction, and totally divorced from the real world and the real social content of our society.

[Welshy]

8) ?


My experience is that they reply to that situation like this: "When companies go into bankruptcy, all of their contracts are void. So why should city governments be any different?" and/or "The city governments are unwilling to make the hard decisions they need to cut spending. Suspending local governments is necessary to get their finances right." The right wingers I talk to (some of them being my family) think that government should be run like a business, so a lot of there justifications stem from that point of view.

[America the Beautiful]

The reason a limited government has the right to restrict abortions is that it is a case of conflicting rights. The foetus' right to life supersedes the mother's right to decide which medical procedures may be performed upon her. It is well within the purview of the government to counter threats against human life. The most important reason that we have any government at all is to prevent someone from prematurely ending the life of another person. It follows from this that the prevention of ending innocent life is an appropriate and essential function of the government.

As to your other points, you are perfectly correct. None of these actions are consistent with the philosophy of a limited government, and ought not to be performed by our elected and appointed officials. You are completely right to condemn them.

[DinodudeEpic]

@property is robbery
Democratic Socialism is a name given to socialists who want to emphasize about their democratic character. It has bearing on governmental size.

Also, people won't say 'MORE GOVERNMENT!' They will make excuses for their actions as always.

@Rabbi K
How there is a gargantuan government? The welfare? Well, the government is merely providing services, no extra control over our lives. Regulations on business, that is not exactly exclusively a left-wing thing. That's only two I can think about. Democratic Socialists want less government in these examples
.Rights for LGBT people
.no extra powers for the police to search
.Less restrictive borders
.Less stricter drug laws
.Letting people do abortion
I mean, I would care more about the government's power over LGBTs and the large numbers of people in prison (and the cost that it puts on the budget.) then economic regulations and welfare programs that don't increase government control over our lives.

@Jimmie Higgins
Spot on! It couldn't be said better.

@America the Beautiful
Welcome to Revleft. And, you finally found out about the fundamental flaw of American Conservatism. (Also what I jokingly call AmeriCon.)

[MarxSchmarx]

You have to understand that for right-wingers, it's not really about reducing the role of government. It's about empowering the authority of "the market". "The market" has to be the final decider on economic questions, it is the only "sure hand" in a world of uncertainty and chaos. The rule by the rich is really what it's about. A nominally democratic government interferes the with right of the rich to rule. Hence the "less government" rhetoric.

It's important to understand that this is where 95% of the right's anti-government rhetoric comes from. Yes, there is 5% of a tiny, tiny minority that does really believe in the laissez-faire ideals, but they are ignored and have no presence of note outside the internet. "Less government" is code for "let the rich rule", i.e., an oligarchy. We legitimize a lie when we take the right's protestations of limited government seriously.

You have to understand that on non economic questions, "the market" is basically useless and the rich don't have anything much to say. Thus anything national security related is outside the purveyance of "the market". Similarly there is no real market-based argument about gay marriage and the death penalty. But, to be sure, there are areas of conflict, as in the "market for (certain) drugs" or the "market for AK-47s" and the like. On these narrow issues there is no real consensus on the right - on the whole, however, the right elects to fall on the side of the authoritarian solution, be it imposed by the rich or the state.

[DinodudeEpic]

I'm saying that the right-wingers are making the phrase 'less government' equal to oligarchy. I'm also saying that we must destroy the right-wingers' arguments for less government, which you and I have done.

My argument is that right-wingers (I mean conservatives and tea partiers) are not for actual less government, but actually a more authoritarian system.

[MarxSchmarx]

I'm saying that the right-wingers are making the phrase 'less government' equal to oligarchy. I'm also saying that we must destroy the right-wingers' arguments for less government, which you and I have done.

My argument is that right-wingers (I mean conservatives and tea partiers) are not for actual less government, but actually a more authoritarian system.

One thing that bothers me is how this argument is rarely made explicit. Rather, in most instances where right-wing hypocrisy is exposed, it is shown to be a logical inconsistency, and that in itself is supposed to stand as testament to their mistaken views.

This approach is self-destructive. We can't just lead people to contradictions, we have to expose the hidden agenda explicitly. What passes for the mainstream "left" in the Anglo-Saxon countries hees and haws about this supposed inconsistency, but doesn't call out the inherent authoritarianism of the right perhaps because they are afraid of the right jumping on that 5% minority that genuinely believes in all this less government nonsense. It's about time they grow some backbone and call a spade a spade.

[progressive_lefty]

The conservatives also like to use Government to support war and to prop up large private corporations.

[ZombieRothbard]

Most of you would call me right wing, yet I don't agree with anything you listed in the original post.

[jake williams]

I mean, the Tea Party is rewriting the political spectrum so that the left-wing = more government, and right-wing = less government.
There's some considerable historical basis for this schema. It's hardly an invention of the Tea Party, or even an invention of their actual ideological factories in the right-libertarian think tanks.

Yes, the traditional European right did indeed favour strong, authoritarian central governments (monarchies). It was opposed by liberals in France and the United States - the nascent bourgeoisie - because they viewed "the state" as such as a threat to the "liberties" they cared about: the bourgeois freedoms of property. In this sense liberalism is the birthright ideology of the bourgeoisie.

The thing is, capitalism grew up, and monarchism basically collapsed as a substantive ideology, but the bourgeoisie fairly quickly discovered the usefulness of a strong centralized state. The bourgeois state, however, is not without contradiction, and states do indeed contain within them threats to private property, however well managed. More than that, the particularities of managing a bourgeois state in the context of sharp class struggle are quite complex. Thus the reinvention of an opposition to simple liberalism has, since the abandonment of monarchism, been a central task of the bourgeoisie as a whole. Fascism and its remnants have been but one.

The problem is really that your traditional "left-right" division from the French Revolution doesn't reflect contemporary class struggle. Liberalism was the revolutionary ideology of the bourgeoisie when monarchies ruled Europe. When the bourgeoisie rules Europe, and the US, and almost everywhere else, liberalism is not a revolutionary ideology. We have revolutionary ideologies - ideologies which advocate revolution against the bourgeoisie - but they're contrary to liberalism, thus putting socialism on the left and liberalism on the right. Insofar as socialism represents a "state" composed of workers, however organized, controlling the economy, while liberalism represents the absense of even the bourgeois state from control of production, the left would indeed entail "more government" while the right less (albeit, to use problematic terms).

Liberalism in the US is somewhat unique. The absense of a major labour party for most of the 20th century, in some sense, pushed the Democrats towards aspects of social democracy. Had the Democrats never made any appeals to labour, it would have rendered unstable a political order which has mostly served the US ruling class quite well, ironically giving the most right wing bourgeois democracy in the world the most left wing "liberals".

Anyway, US "Republicanism" is likewise a unique solution to problems faced by parts of the bourgeoisie. It's a partial solution to the problems of liberalism - liberalism certainly serves factions of capital in, say, deregulating finance (which, despite a lot of illusions, the Democrats do more than the Republicans do), but its anti-statism is unsuited to the cold blood of class struggle, as the fascists argued centrally.

Of course the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans are exaggerated both by the parties themselves to appeal to their respective bases, and by apologists for bourgeois democracy in general to defend the ideological hegemony of bourgeois opinion, but they do exist. The Democrats do in general tend to support state welfare policies and labour rights slightly more than the Republicans do, but this is largely more to placate workers and forestall the creation of a labour party than it is ideological. The Democrats also tend to advocate a more effective regulatory state, but this typically entails "regulations" which certain factions of the bourgeoisie find beneficial: for example, regulations which would profit eco-capitalists hoping to benefit from carbon markets. The two go back and forth about trade policy, but in general, it's actually the Republicans who tend toward economic nationalism, especially for certain sectors (think of oil subsidies), again contrary to a lot of delusions.

Anyway, right-libertarianism, the underlying ideology of the Tea Party, is an interesting formation. I think it probably originated out of some considerable ideological sincerity on the part of some academic economists, rather than any conscious class project. (This, setting aside its claimed and partially accurate origins in the classical liberalism of the bourgeois revolutions, which very much was a conscious class project.) However, aspects of it have been slowly picked out as useful by the bourgeoisie. The Democrats' efforts to court labour have contradicted its essentially liberal modern formulation, which is a problem for the bourgeois backers of liberalism. Curiously however, it's not the traditional backers of the Democrats which have promoted right-libertarianism or the Tea Party.

This is partly because liberalism has largely followed the early petty bourgeoisie along its development into the big bourgeoisie, that coalesced around high finance, the modern backers of the Democrats which, despite contradictions, is still in essence a "liberal" party regarding significant economic policies. But the objective petty bourgeois contraditions with state power - in particular, the fact that strong executive authority, if and when captured by the biggest businesses and the most successful factions of capital, exacerbate differences in power between big and small business and imbalance the market - still remain. Thus, a big part of the story of right-liberalism is the rescusitation of anti-state policies by a new petty bourgeoisie in a new context of class struggle, of the petty bourgeoisie against the big bourgeoisie (and this is not a progressive class struggle, as the Tea Party should make clear).

But it's not the whole story. The Tea Party (both in itself, and as an ultra right section of the Republican Party by proxy) has substantial big business backers, particularly around energy, and the Koch brothers even more particularly. This is for a number of reasons.

The Tea Party represents an exciting opportunity for the "big bourgeoisie", the culmination of a project to redevelop a right populism following the collapse of classical fascism, and which would contain none of its welfare state commitments (nor those of modern European fascism, nor those of the Democrats). The Tea Party tries to sell the gutting of the welfare state as the liberalization of the economy, and the liberalization of the economy as liberatory for the working class. Neither of these are true, but their success represents the considerable advance of bourgeois propaganda.

However, the Tea Party represents all kinds of problems to the bourgeoisie. Populist rhetoric can get out of hand. The Tea Party, in and of itself containing pseudo-democratic structures and a sort of anti-intellectualism, is unsuited in and of itself for carrying out the complex project of class rule. This is clear with the wavering on economic nationalism. Ultimately, liberalism as such is ineffective for the bourgeoisie as a whole, and it's especially so for the sophisticated technocrats in the Republican Party. David Frum has been made something of a martyr for coming out against Sarah Palin and several other whackos, but he's mostly been right (from the perspective of those responsible for making the Republican Party a vehicle of class rule), and I'm almost certain that he knows, whatever is made of him in the press, that the right people are listening.

All in all, particular historical circumstances have created a situation where it really is the right calling for "less government", broadly speaking, than the left, even within the context of bourgeois politics where traditionally the "left", as against monarchial authoritarianism, has been anti-statist. The items you list as examples of right wing statism basically fall into four categories:

Irrelevant. The bourgeoisie doesn't care about abortion or gay marriage. The Republicans have carved out a voter base which cares about them, but they're not serious political issues for the bourgeoisie. Gay individuals in the bourgeoisie might tend towards the Democrats because the latter haven't been willing, in the last couple decades, to make political capital out of gay bashing, but even that won't last forever.
Class warfare. Again, state authority at home (and abroad) is necessary for maintaining and expanding bourgeois control. Laissez-faire doesn't do it. This includes the PATRIOT business, aspects of the death penalty (although tough-on-crime is partly category 1. BS, see above)., aspects of military policy, and so on.
Economic nationalism. Much of the military is an economic policy, distributing public funds (ie. taxes on workers) to private business, and securing overseas investments. This also includes the corporate subsidies.
Not exercises of state authority. "Trade union rights" are rights which only exist if protected by states. Absent state authority, won by workers, bosses can simply murder any workers who attempt to organize. Understandable liberal-coded rhetoric in Wisconsin aside, the enforcement of labour rights requires state power, it's not a "natural liberty" that requires any special bourgeois law to repress.

All that said, the right has remained the authoritarian faction, with the exception of welfare interventionism, which I think is basically a political bargain on the part of liberals, and rent interventionism (regulations benefitting certain businesses, direct subsidies, and the military), which split both ways. This is partly what brings the Tea Party in conflict with the Republican leadership, but it's very possible that the bourgeoisie as a whole (not as a conscious entity but as a sum of quasi-conscious actors) is going to detabilize the system and rebuild the Republicans as a liberal party, with the Democrats as the right-populists, which is where they both used to be.

[Ocean Seal]

Most of you would call me right wing, yet I don't agree with anything you listed in the original post.
The mainstream rightwing isn't made up of anarcho-capitalists though or what you're position is, its made up of socially conservative free market activists.

[DinodudeEpic]

@ZombieRothbard Then maybe there is actually leftism hidden underneath your right-libertarian shell. After all, classical liberals were actually considered leftists in the 19th century. I mean, I actually support actual free markets that are truly free, not controlled by corporations (That would NOT make it free.), but controlled by the workers via worker cooperatives. However, a welfare state (That merely provides free necessities, and regulates markets to make sure cooperatives don't destroy eachother.) wouldn't be bad in my opinion.

However, you don't have to like the welfare state part, but you would agree with a market with cooperatives instead of corporations.

Even if you simply support laissez-faire markets, being a right-winger means WAY more then simply supporting laissez-faire markets. In fact, laissez-faire markets isn't even a main feature of the right.

@jammoe I don't really have time to reply to your post, but I will later.

[NewLeft]

The most idiotic piece of historical revisionism I had ever come across. I mean, the Tea Party is rewriting the political spectrum so that the left-wing = more government, and right-wing = less government.

I have a question for the right-wingers...


Why do you want the government regulate gay marriage?
Why do you want government control over our abortion?
Why do you want the government to have the right to kill people(death penalty)?
Why do you want the government to wire-tap our phones? (PATRIOT Act)
Why do you want the government to regulate our trade union rights? (Wisconsin, Michigan)
Why do you want the government to subsidize corporations? (Democrats are guilty of this too, but I consider them to be centrists/right centrists more then anything else.)
Why do you want a huge government in the form of the military?
Why do you want a government that can override city governments? (Michigan)
Why do you want a government that controls our borders in a draconian way?

I'm sick of the less government argument. The US government has grown in size, but it seems that it also became more right wing in the process. I mean, REALLY! Social Democrats and Liberals seem to only want welfare programs (Some times for the Liberals. Both however are simply wanting to keep the welfare programs that are still around nowadays though) and economic regulations. Conservatives seem to control our personal lives.

So, what is left and right? Well, left and right came from the French Revolutionaries and the Monarchists respectively. So, left means anyone who roughly idealizes the core values of the French Revolution (Liberty, equality, fraternity) and right means anyone who roughly idealizes the core values of the Monarchists (Order, tradition, and authority)

(Sorry for posting this in a forum of leftists who probably already know this. I'm just fed up with the conservatives WHINING about how our government has grown lately when the country has been under conservative control for almost 30 years straight.)

1. Gay people?? I don't understand that it's like you like your own gender?? You like your own self?? That's weird, god never made you that way.
2. Abortion is killing innocent babies, of course it should be illegal. I always choose life, even if the mother's life is threatened.. Because it's the mother's fault, maybe she should have used protection.
3. I support less government.
4. Patriot Act is for us patriots!!
5. Trade unions don't have rights, you invented them.
6. Corporations create jobs, we need to give them all our money so that they can create more jobs.
7. America aint pussy, we need to show who's boss!
8. Wat
9. Without borders, we would have all these damn welfare mexicans come in and drain our resources.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Hi and welcome America the Beautiful! How nice, a conservative that wants to discuss the issues - it seems like we were getting more right-wing trolls than debate-worthy OI folks recently!


The reason a limited government has the right to restrict abortions is that it is a case of conflicting rights. The foetus' right to life supersedes the mother's right to decide which medical procedures may be performed upon her. It is well within the purview of the government to counter threats against human life.

Ok, I'll bite.

By that reasoning the government needs to care for and raise children. If it's the job of the government to counter preventable threats against human life, then full free healthcare is required of the government. In addition, free housing and food for the poor and homeless is required of limited government. If a woman does not wish to give birth and care for a child, then it is the job of limited government to give birth to and raise the child until they can survive on their own.

But in reality, the effect of anti-abortion laws is to control people's ability to control their own reproduction. Often the same people who are the most against abortion rights also would get rid of sex-education or access to birth control. Since a fetus can not survive outside of the womb it is effectively still a part of the woman and forcing her to carry it to term against her will is a violation of her ability to control her own life and body. I also don't believe that fetuses (or animilas) have any abstract rights - only the rights that we give them since they can not make any case for themselves. We know women want the ability to have safe abortions and to control their reproductive systems... no feotus has ever made a case for why it wants to be born nor would it even have a concept of that even if it was 2 seconds away from being born. So why speculate on what a fetus may or may not want at the expense of what a woman wants when we know for a fact what the adult woman wants.


The most important reason that we have any government at all is to prevent someone from prematurely ending the life of another person. It follows from this that the prevention of ending innocent life is an appropriate and essential function of the government. But this is not the reason we have government at all and no government has ever put preserving human life as it's main goal in the abstract - at least not in practice. Feudal princedoms punished people for taking innocent lives, but the rulers would have laughed if you said that was the reason for government - they believed that government was there because it always had been and was needed in order to preserve the holy balance and order of the world mandated by god. It it was really the order and balance of a society where they were on top that they were preserving. The logic of all governments is the logic of whatever group sets up and maintains the social status quo of that region.

It's ends justify the means and in modern society the end is maintaining (or increasing) the ability of business to grow and keep on keeping on - that why their means have changed when they felt it to be necessary. At some times in US history, the means were "Big government" and at others, "reduced government", but their ends (preserving the social staus quo and ability of business to exist and grow) remain the same. When the ruling class is afraid of revolt, suddenly they think reforms and social programs are a necessary and beneficial thing - but without fear of internal revolt, they will slash these programs and increase hardships on laborers. When the ruling class wants an excuse to expand it's power militarily, then a bombing that results in the death of innocents means that vengeance is a virtue (9/11) but when armed racists kill blacks, assassinate activists, and bomb churches filled with children, then vengeance is not really beneficial to the ruling class and they call for peace and not to "fall to their level". If the US government overthrew Afghanistan for harboring terrorists, why would it have its hands tied when Openly segregationist states in the South harbored Klansmen - often in political office? It's because they do not have abstract values... only values based on what is best for the ruling people and preserving the kind of social order they need.

[Distruzio]

Why do you want the government regulate gay marriage?

I don't.

Why do you want government control over our abortion?

I don't.

Why do you want the government to have the right to kill people(death penalty)?

I don't.

Why do you want the government to wire-tap our phones? (PATRIOT Act)

I don't.

Why do you want the government to regulate our trade union rights? (Wisconsin, Michigan)

I don't.


Why do you want the government to subsidize corporations? (Democrats are guilty of this too, but I consider them to be centrists/right centrists more then anything else.)

I don't.

Why do you want a huge government in the form of the military?

I don't.

Why do you want a government that can override city governments? (Michigan)

I don't.
Why do you want a government that controls our borders in a draconian way?

I don't.

Essentially, the answer to all of these is... I don't.

[agnixie]

Beyond the human rights stuff outlined in the OP, I'll note that small government as an ideology is self-defeating, because a) it tends to come from people who insist that government is always bad, and these same people tend to demonstrate that government is especially bad when they're holding the reins. b) as an euphemism for low taxes, small government fails to mean anything, fascist countries had massively lower tax rates than America before WW2, c) it ignores that corporations are also a form of government and d) it ignores that the suburban petty bourgeois world these people dream of would be impossible without massive government intervention in the form of zoning laws, interstates, in many cases segregation and public education.

[DinodudeEpic]

Why do you want the government regulate gay marriage?

I don't.

Why do you want government control over our abortion?

I don't.

Why do you want the government to have the right to kill people(death penalty)?

I don't.

Why do you want the government to wire-tap our phones? (PATRIOT Act)

I don't.

Why do you want the government to regulate our trade union rights? (Wisconsin, Michigan)

I don't.


Why do you want the government to subsidize corporations? (Democrats are guilty of this too, but I consider them to be centrists/right centrists more then anything else.)

I don't.

Why do you want a huge government in the form of the military?

I don't.

Why do you want a government that can override city governments? (Michigan)

I don't.
Why do you want a government that controls our borders in a draconian way?

I don't.

Essentially, the answer to all of these is... I don't.

Then, you're a leftist! There's more to leftism then mere economics. In fact, you probably have more in common with me politically then you are with conservatives....

[Distruzio]

Then, you're a leftist! There's more to leftism then mere economics. In fact, you probably have more in common with me politically then you are with conservatives....


:brofist:

One of the reasons I'm here and not in the GOP. Although I'm far from leftist, as I consider the political spectrum to be:
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZdyMijg5FYa3XJy_a3nuRHODUajtcW qDXDtN9Yw8yYY1zxRYy

[ZeroNowhere]

Monarchists against big government.

[Distruzio]

Monarchists against big government.


I'm not a monarchist.

[Judicator]

You skipped a few:

-drug prohibition
-prostitution