But what if it's what the people want? I don't think big government is all doom and gloom that some people like to make it.
You want smokers out of restaurants. Government does it as a health policy. You are happy. Then they use the same argument to change how your fries are cooked and prevent you from buying the kinds of soft drinks you like in any size. Your want was answered and then bit you in the ass.
You don't want gay people getting married and give your government the power to say who can and can't get married. Later your daughter is denied the right to marry a boy even you approve of for, who knows what reason. But that power was given to them by your vote.
You want to feel safe on an airplane so you give your government the power to hunt down terrorists outside the rules of the Constitution. Next thing you know you are removing your daughter's diaper and helping your grandmother get out of a wheelchair for security purposes.
Your country is in economic trouble. You vote for a man who says he knows who caused the economic problem and will stop them. You vote for him. Next thing you know your son is drafted to hunt these people down in the streets and later sent to invade Poland.
Never has a limited government turned your wants against you, your liberty, or other people and nations. Large, powerful governments have a dark history of doing it...a lot. You studied anthropology and archeology. Tell me, how many limited governments conquered lands, built empires with their military, raped, killed, and pillaged other nations, tortured dissenters, made them entertainment slaves for the masses, and had public executions of a hundred various gruesome forms?
If it was wouldn't people rise up against it?
Where do you live? What country? How did it form? How did every change of power and/or form of government occur when not by a foreign invasion? Even the great Ceasar fell to this. People rise up against it all the time. Royalty has literally lost their head to people rising up. And that is why it is important that a powerful government first make a majority of the population dependent on the system. Keep giving until there are too many who are reliant to want to stand up to you, no matter what you do.
And isn't it always people supporting the government as long as it's on their side? I mean you support smaller government as it takes your side on specific issues.
Rob Peter to pay Paul and you can count on the vote of Paul. It is why in a two party system it is the 20%-40% of undecideds that are important. The rest vote for you because your party says it will give them what they want, even at the cost of others' liberties.
It's only an opinion though, there's nothing factual to say a big government will always trample the rights of the people.
Always? No. But does it have a large ugly history? Yes. From ancient brutal empires to the big ones like Hitler, to modern day cases like Escobar or African warlords. They all came to power by giving the majority what they want and/or in disenfranchising the minorities they dislike. No dictators came out of a limited system.
Political philosophers through history have said that Democracy's biggest threat is from a meddling government. And I'm not just talking the likes of Jefferson, but even visitors who studied the system, such as Alexis de Toqueville
If you ask someone who prefers big government they'll give you the exact same answer with the word small replaced with the word big.
Yes, I've seen Gone With the Wind.
But really your explanation doesn't work. Sure, people would argue that handouts aren't readily given as much or they feel insecure because security isn't as in your face and soldiers aren't marching in other lands. But they will have had nothing taken away from them anymore then I take away from a charity by not donating.
If someone gets in a small government system and feels like they have lost something it is because the big government they got used to did what they always do, make people dependent on them. If a drug dealer does it we consider them horrible. A government does the same thing financially and those who try to stop it are considered inhumane?
Big government takes in order to give. Small government doesn't give as much and thus doesn't take as much.
I'm not advocating large government here, I'm just saying that I don't believe a small government would be really any better or worse than a big one.
A small government would stay out of things like gay marriage, your choice to eat what you want, and require you only be responsible for your decisions and a bare minimum of the costs of protecting your liberties.
Saying a small government will be as bad as a big government is like saying a parent that teaches responsibility is as bad as one that beats their kid every time they screw up on even the smallest of thing, like a mother gluing her two-year-old daughter to a wall for not potty training fast enough.
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Now for something not so completely different.
For those who think Obama treats other nations and their people well, and is an honest and peaceful individual, here is a story of a Pakistani public figure with great popularity and expected to become the next prime minister. He also leads protest marches against drones and vows that as prime minister he will clear them from Pakistan's skies, even if they have to shoot them down.
On his way to New York for a fundraiser he was pulled out of line at the airport by US immigration officials and detained while they, according to his claims, questioned him on his drone stance. Even if he made that part up, a political figure in an allied country was detained and questioned while legally flying to the US.
Honest and peaceful?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/28/detention-imran-khan-drones
