Reply #7: Its important exactly how you propose to arrive at smaller government

[arendt]

Have you seen the Jonathan Rauch piece on "Stoking the Beast"?

http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/2006/05/stoking_the_bea.html

He reviews an argument from the Libertarian Cato Institute that cutting taxes
without cutting spending INCREASES the size of government. It is the
death knell for any intellectual credibility for the death-by-tax-cut
school of New Deal Haters.

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It is perfectly legitimate to advocate for smaller government with
an HONEST statement of how to do so - which programs to cut, how to
re-arrange the tax burden,etc. That is, to deal with Rauch's argument.

The problem with "its your money" is that it is totally DISHONEST.
Its the standard Bush M.O. - put down a line of bullshit and then
do exactly what you intended on doing in the first place.

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I do disagree that we could "get by with(out) most of the social spending".
You would close NIH? CDC? the National Laboratories? Believe it or not,
such government-sponsored science for the common good is a social program.
(I know that the Nat Labs do mostly military work, but they do a large
percentage of the pitifully small amount of non-military science in this
brain-forsaken culture.)

arendt