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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (6723)	12/13/2005 5:32:58 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542043

I remembered Norquist was big on starving the beast - Google did the rest. ;<) I have never heard anyone on the right who thought beyond "let's get rid of the government spending and regulations we don't like". I believe there is a general ideological assumption that by eliminating the "problem" (as made famous by Ronald Reagan), some kind of private sector, free-market utopia would follow, as people were free to choose (couldn't resist the Milton Friedman pun) their economic course in life. Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that such a system could work in a society of 300 million people with an advanced economy, linked to the rest of the world in a million ways. But it has a visceral appeal to some. You can be sure they are the group who don't expect to need government services (though they won't turn down the Social Security they don't need or Medicare, heaven forbid, or any regulatory rulings that favor their businesses). Deep down, the "starve the beast" crowd don't want no government, they just want to use the government and its resources for their own purposes, in the grand belief that taking care of themselves is the best way to take care of the great unwashed masses outside their gated communities.