Big Government vs. Limited Government

Michael Tanner, a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, questions Rick Santorum's conservative credentials and thinks Santorum is just the next in a long line of big government conservatives.  Here is Tanner:

Santorum’s voting record shows that he embraced George Bush–style “big-government conservatism.” For example, he supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. 

He never met an earmark that he didn’t like. In fact, it wasn’t just earmarks for his own state that he favored, which might be forgiven as pure electoral pragmatism, but earmarks for everyone, including the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere.” The quintessential Washington insider, he worked closely with Tom DeLay to set up the “K Street Project,” linking lobbyists with the GOP leadership.

He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey. He still supports an industrial policy with the government tilting the playing field toward manufacturing industries and picking winners and losers.

I am not actually going to rebut any of the points Tanner brings up because while some may be true, others are described in a vacuum without any type of context or education on the issues (even the most conservative member of the Senate, Jim DeMint has voted for earmarks, and so has the fiscal hawk Rep. Ron Paul).  I am more focused on the language of describing a government that has breached its constitutional bounds as "big government."  The obvious implication is that a constitutional government is "small government."  The Founders would disagree.

Here is Charles Kesler from a great essay published a few years ago in Imprimis:

Proposition one: Limited government can be distinguished from small government. The two concepts are easily confused because they usually overlap...My second proposition is that limited government can enhance our freedom—even though it costs money. Were Americans in 1944 somehow less free than if we had not spent so copiously to stop Hitler and to liberate Western Europe? Or, to change the analogy, does government spending on courts and prisons diminish our liberty?

          ...

This leads to proposition three: Limited government can be compatible with energetic government. That is, limited government doesn't mean government that does as little as possible. To fight terrorists, or even to arrest and prosecute criminals, requires an energetic government, especially in the executive branch. While our Founders were not uninterested in the question of the sum of power granted to the federal government, they were more interested in the kinds and distribution of powers that would be confirmed by the Constitution. They moved the debate from power (singular) to powers (plural); hence their profound thoughts on the separation of powers. Separation was meant both to prevent the worst and to enable the best kind of government. It was designed to prevent tyranny by not allowing one or more branches to escape the law or to encroach on the other branches. But it was also designed to allow each branch to perform its duty well—to keep the judicial power judicious, the legislative power deliberative, and the executive power energetic. So long as the objects or purposes of the federal government were kept to a few great ends—for example, diplomacy, national defense, regulating interstate commerce—the means to those ends could be construed more or less liberally and safely.

Accordingly, my fourth proposition is that limited government must be constitutional government. Government must be limited to its proper ends, but its means must be capable of effecting those ends. To resolve these goals was the great achievement of the political science of the Founding Fathers, whose emblem was the Constitution; or to be more precise, the Constitution as seen in the light of the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Political battles during the Founding era revolved around the best way to effectuate the ends of government, which were spelled out in the Constitution.  The Founders disagreed mainly over how energetic government should be in effectuating those ends.  The battles now are of a completely different nature, because neither major party agrees on the ends of government never mind the means to achieving those ends.

Although they have done better recently, conservatives need to be mindful of talking about a limited or constitutional government instead of focusing on adjective like "small" which, like the President's favorite adjective, "change" is completely a product of modern value-free social science.  There can be a small government that is a tyranny just as there can be a government of a larger size that can be just.  We just need to be mindful of the language we use and how it can help shape our politics and ultimately, ourselves.