For decades, Americans have been taught to be wary of the government. In 1986, then President Ronald Reagan stated his famous quote: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Many Republicans, even today, continue to call themselves “libertarian,” associating themselves with a key value of our country. There is a reason, however, that the Libertarian Party of the United States continues to exist separately from the Republican Party: the Libertarian party has for decades advocated for the opposite of “small government,” often with the aid of Democrats. In reality, “small government” is often used as an excuse to attack programs that empower citizens and allow for greater accountability, while continuing to pass legislation that harms Americans’ freedoms.
The libertarian critique of the power of government is one as old as America and was galvanized during the Cold War. Indeed, after Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare” was exposed as a con, the United States passed laws intended to protect civil liberties in the country. However, during Ronald Reagan’s time, a silent understanding began to emerge: “big government” programs like welfare wasted taxpayer money on so-called “welfare queens” and needed to be ended. At the same time, expansions of the enforcement power of the state needed to be expanded. This idea continued into the presidency of Bill Clinton, who signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Often just called “welfare reform,” the law kicked millions of people off of welfare by instituting cruel and inhumane work requirements to receive welfare. Intended to lessen the size of the government and encourage “personal responsibility” it instead attacked the social mobility of the American poor by forcing them to work low-paying jobs to be allowed to receive government assistance (essentially the government subsidizing unfair labor practices), and required them to jump through Kafkaesque government approvals to “prove” they were not “taking advantage of” the government. The same year, President Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. This law instituted a major crackdown on immigration to the United States. It empowered the government to ban people from the United States for ten years or more for immigrating illegally. It also removed due process from many deportation proceedings, effectively carving an exception into the constitution for undocumented people. IIRAIRA actually resulted in those who came here illegally on a temporary basis choosing to attempt to stay permanently (since they could not re-enter if they left) and laid the groundwork for America’s current immigration crisis. It was Republicans who advocated for both the “small government” attack on welfare, and the massive expansion of state power over America’s immigrant population.
The cognitive dissonance between attacking agencies that protect human rights, while striking the ones that most violate human rights, became especially clear in the 2000s. Republicans like President George W. Bush launched efforts to privatize social security and deregulate the economy. These efforts would bring huge profits to major corporations, while not meaningfully expanding the civil liberties of many Americans. Instead, they would now need to contend with billionaire investment groups attempting to make a profit off of their retirement, as well as being subjected to scams and continued deceit. The incompetent regulation of the financial system at this time was one of the factors that led to the Great Recession in 2008. While the privatization of social security failed, Congress was busy passing legislation that trampled on American Civil Liberties. Most famously Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which weakened restrictions on intergovernmental data sharing and allowed for the formation of an unprecedented surveillance apparatus. They passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to create an entire new government to centralize the different agencies with police power, allowing for a coordinated attack on human rights in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security, now led by the former Governor of South Dakota and famous dog-shooter (yes, actually) Kristi Noem, is home to agencies such as Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protections (CBP), the Transportation Security Administration, which any reasonable person would assume should be in the Department of Transportation, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which mostly responds to natural disasters and should be in the Department of the Interior. The Department of Homeland Security recently announced that one would need a REAL ID (essentially a normal ID except harder to get and also a part of a massive government database on you) to board a plane after May 7, 2025. This is based on the REAL ID Act of 2005, which intended to use the standard to protect Americans from terrorism. Except, the law was supposed to be implemented in 2008, and not once in its seventeen-year delay did the lack of a REAL ID expose Americans to terrorism.
The epitome of attacking important government regulation while expanding the police state in America exists now, in 2025. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has attacked government agencies in charge of protecting children from diseases like tuberculosis and measles such as U.S. Agency for International Development. DOGE has dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency in charge of regulating financial institutions, and taken away its power to regulate online financial services, essentially taking away all government oversight. DOGE has attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, and has put Americans at greater risks of cancer and other diseases caused by pollution. DOGE has also sabotaged the Department of Health and Human Services, postponing a crucial Food and Drug Administration meeting about this year’s flu shot, hampering the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ability to issue advice on vaccines, and obliterating the federal response to the growing crisis of bird flu in the United States.
These attacks on government agencies seek to make people’s lives meaningfully worse; only mega-corporations benefit from “looser” environmental regulations. Average Americans, meanwhile, suffer, get sick, get scammed, and eventually collapse under the weight of the oppressive systems that grow in place of these agencies. But at least there is further personal liberty, right? No. The administration has expanded the powers of agencies like ICE, has begun weaponizing the FBI against political dissidents, and has called for American citizens to be exiled to and imprisoned in El Salvador. The expansion of police power is fundamentally at odds with the idea of small government. The government is not smaller when they abandon public health efforts if armed agents are disappearing people off the streets! Instead, they are making you less able to do anything about it. That is entirely the point.
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