http://neveryetmelted.com/2006/05/01/the-end-of-small-government-conservatism/ The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. -- D.H. Lawrence Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:06:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 http://neveryetmelted.com/2006/05/01/the-end-of-small-government-conservatism/comment-page-1/#comment-723 Nathan Hitchen Tue, 02 May 2006 14:17:14 +0000 http://neveryetmelted.com/?p=960#comment-723 I think the problem is that small-government conservatives haven't found a way to cobble together an effective coalition of vested interest groups that benefit when government "gets smaller." Politics is not enacted through appeals to ideas; the ideological "air war" of abstract arguments about the limits to government, etc., is only that--an air war. The ground war, where ideas become enacted into reality via programs, and where we see actual structural change, is enacted through the action of organized interest groups. Right now, all interest groups are calculated to benefit when government grows (they want subsidies, etc.). The trick to effect real, lasting, institutional change towards limited government is two fold: 1) Through the judiciary; 2) Creating the condition wherein a class of people will be invested in government's decrease. Judges must be appointed who will (as mirror images of New Deal era judges) STRIKE DOWN unconstitutional expanses in govervnment activity--judges like Janice Rogers Brown; that is how the Progressives ultimately triumphed after their electoral/political failures. Justices like Brandeis and O. W. Holmes changed jurisprudence so as to remove the judiciary as an institution committed to limited government via the Constitution. Secondly, I believe programs like the HSAs and Social Security privatization schemes can structure a class of people who can be invested in, established to, and institutionally interested in lower taxes, and thus less expansive government activity. I think the problem is that small-government conservatives haven’t found a way to cobble together an effective coalition of vested interest groups that benefit when government “gets smaller.” Politics is not enacted through appeals to ideas; the ideological “air war” of abstract arguments about the limits to government, etc., is only that—an air war. The ground war, where ideas become enacted into reality via programs, and where we see actual structural change, is enacted through the action of organized interest groups. Right now, all interest groups are calculated to benefit when government grows (they want subsidies, etc.). The trick to effect real, lasting, institutional change towards limited government is two fold: 1) Through the judiciary; 2) Creating the condition wherein a class of people will be invested in government’s decrease. Judges must be appointed who will (as mirror images of New Deal era judges) STRIKE DOWN unconstitutional expanses in govervnment activity—judges like Janice Rogers Brown; that is how the Progressives ultimately triumphed after their electoral/political failures. Justices like Brandeis and O. W. Holmes changed jurisprudence so as to remove the judiciary as an institution committed to limited government via the Constitution. Secondly, I believe programs like the HSAs and Social Security privatization schemes can structure a class of people who can be invested in, established to, and institutionally interested in lower taxes, and thus less expansive government activity.

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