On “Big Government”

It's so hard to argue against people who lie about what they believe. Remember that GWB increased the size of government more than any other president. > You are not against “big government”; you are in favor of “let's trim 10-20% off the government while leaving it pretty big” or something like that. > > If you really mean “let's trim 10-20%” can we please stop being so melodramatic? As I've whined before, moving government size, or tax brackets, by a few percent is not the difference between capitalism and socialism. > > * Libertarian: government should be 5% of its current size. > * Socialist: government should be 200% of its current size. > * Republicans and Democrats judged by actions not rhetoric: government should be 105% of whatever it just was. Disagreement on where the new 5% goes. > > (—[Havoc Pennington](https://blog.ometer.com/2009/09/12/which-piece-of-big-government-are-you-against/))