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Limited Government Does Not Mean Small Government.
Words have meanings. Know thy enemy.
The government that governs best governs least. If you’ve spent more than a minute in right-wing or anarchist circles (those are NOT the same places!!!), you will have heard this. It has been attributed to several different people, and I haven’t seen enough credible research to attribute it.
That being said, what does it actually mean? Does it mean there should be no governance? This seems to be the Republican position. Publicly at least.
Anarchists tend to view it as against coercive governance. Social Democrats dismiss it as a shell game, etc. It begins quickly to become devoid of meaning. That’s the beauty and horror of sound bites. They’re easy to remember, but also almost always ambiguous or completely devoid of actual meaning.
I am very much in favor of limited government. I am not in favor of small government. These are absolutely always conflated by the right wing, particularly the Reaganites and Trumpists.
A limited government can (and should) be quite powerful, but have a well defined scope. No fuzzy edges. Legislators and voters alike should be constantly striving to get those fuzzy edges straightened out. More to the point, a limited government has very well-defined roles and powers…
