GREAT thoughts on "Big Government"....

[chiburb]

Liberals didn't create big government; history did. The social upheavals attending our shift from an agrarian economy to urban industrialization and mass production called forth popular demands for Social Security, medical and unemployment insurance, workplace and product safety regulation and more.
Matthew Miller, New York Times Book Review, May, 1996


To cry, "Give Americans back their hard-earned tax dollars! " is a disingenuous way of saying, "To hell with establishing justice, promoting welfare and securing the blessings of liberty!" It's nothing more than a cynical bribe to citizens calling on them to give up on one another and go it alone. That may work for the rich and privileged but it's something most of us can ill afford. Big government--or let's call it strong democracy--is for the little guy; it's how he and his neighbors can take on the big bullies in the private sector. Naturally, the bullies resent the competition and make war on "big government," ostensibly on behalf of the little guy.
Benjamin R.Barber, the Nation, November 1996

Courtesy of Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/chi-zornlog.story

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Freepers are anarchists, I guess.

[el_gato]

2. Freepers are not anarchists

they want the government to control every aspect of your behaviour unless it involves killing brown skinned people for money

[eridani]

3. Replace 'taxpayer' meme with 'citizen' meme

http://www.counterpunch.org/smith05052003.html

'Customer' and 'consumer' were not the only words being used to change the nature of citizenship. David Kemmis, the mayor of Missoula, MT, pointed out that the word 'taxpayer' now "regularly holds the place which in a true democracy would be occupied by 'citizen.' Taxpayers bear a dual relationship to government, neither half of which has anything at all to do with democracy. Taxpayers pay tribute to the government and they receive services from it. So does every subject of a totalitarian regime. What taxpayers do not do, and what people who call themselves taxpayers have long since stopped even imagining themselves doing, is governing."

Then there was growing use of the term "stakeholder" that covertly diminished the citizens' role to that of a minor participant. Ironically, 'stakeholder' literally means a person who holds the money while two other people bet. Whoever wins, the stakeholder gets nothing.

Another phrase that started cropping up was 'civil society,' a patronizing description of people who, in a democracy, are meant to be running the place. The term has come to used in elite circles with roughly the same condescension of a bishop talking about a church altar guild.