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Big Government Liberals

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Atrios is quite right; while liberals tend to believe that taxes should be high enough to pay for expenditures, and also tend to believe that a well funded, stable state can usefully fulfill a number of societal tasks, no one believes that big government is a virtue in and of itself.

I don’t know any “big government liberals” in the sense that Andy means. I don’t know anybody who gets a stiffy at the thought of raising taxes and increasing government spending as a share of GDP just for the hell of it. Liberals I know tend to think there are things government should do and we should, roughly, figure out how to pay for those things, though we’re not entirely allergic to deficit spending. When taxes have to go up to cover interest and debt repayment costs no liberals I know are going to go “YAY! HIGHER TAXES! WOO HOOO!”

On the right, the idea that small government is good seems to have escaped its theoretical roots and become a dogmatic assertion, one that is ignored in practice as consistently as it is declared in rhetoric. There is no corresponding
belief on the left in some kind of ideal state of the state.

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