Sarah Palin likes government too

CNN ^ | July 12, 2010 | Julian E. Zelizer

[maggief]

(CNN) -- During a speech at an event called "Freedom Fest," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warned Tea Party activists that while government spending was a bad thing, conservatives should not go too far and start calling for reductions in the military budget.

While Palin told the crowd in Norfolk, Virginia, "Something has to be done urgently to stop the out-of-control Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending machine," she also told them, "We must make sure, however, that we do nothing to undermine the effectiveness of our military."

Palin's speech touched on a historic problem for the conservative movement. Ever since conservatives embraced a hawkish stance toward national security policy in the early Cold War in the late 1940s and started to challenge Democrats for not being tough enough, national security has always been the poison pill for anti-government conservatism.

Despite all their rhetoric about the dangers of government intervention and the virtues of private markets, conservatives have rather consistently supported an expansion of the government when it comes to national security.

[MrB]

The founders “liked government”, too, I guess -

“to secure these rights, governments are established among men”

[calex59]

What a BS article.

[agere_contra]

conservatives have rather consistently supported an expansion of the government military when it comes to national security.

Fixed it.

[Psalm 144]

That is not a problem. Military defense is within the scope of the Constituion.

Liberals are proof of devolution.

[sodpoodle]

Defense of the Nation was and is, the first and only priority.

What a pant load of convoluted nonsense.

[McGruff]

Editor's note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of “Arsenal of Democracy “ and a book on former President Carter to be published next fall by Times Books...

I thought this piece was written by a 5th grader.

[Crim]

They are not men...they are DEVO

[BitWielder1]

Because infrastructure and security is the responsibility of the gov't.
Most of everything else they're doing isn't.

[AU72]

I guess that proves that Sarah Palin is not an anarchist.

[theBuckwheat]

The question is not government or no government. The important questions only follow the affirmation of important and timeless facts:

1) Government, like George Washington said, is force, and like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master;

2) Government cannot spend without first taking somehow some way;

3) It was not really necessary, but we have given government the monopoly power to print money and even allowed it to create “liquidity” out of thin air;

4) We have allowed government to grow to such a point it has become a self-serving parasite that needs to keep us financially captive for the sake of the taxes it can extract from us over our lifetimes. We even have allowed government to tax the assets we leave at our passing;

I am sure that FReepers can add a few more essential points I have missed.

Once we agree on these points, we can then go on to discuss what level of government is best.

However, anyone who reads the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution should notice that those who wrote and ratified it considered that a certain minimal level of government was necessary to enjoy the blessings of liberty. Unlike any other government of men on earth (excluding the one God gave to Israel at Sinai), this government was founded to maximize LIBERTY, not to maximize government.

We have allowed power-hungry people to invert the relationship between the citizen and the government that Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Mason and others built. Our government seeks to destroy our ability to control it. It seeks to become our master instead of remaining properly as the guarantor of our liberties.

[MrB]

Notice that everything the left opposes is what the founders say is a requirement of government,

while every thing they support is what the founders
prohibited government from doing...

Isaiah 5:20.
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.

[Le Chien Rouge]

I likes government too but not:

1) when it is taking money from my paycheck—fair tax please
2) when it is snooping in my home
3) when government refuses to defend the borders
4) when telling me that the certain ‘extra ingredient’ I put in my brownies is illegal
5) when it denies people the right to defend their homes with firearms-—that’s you Chicago and DC
6) When it takes controlling interest in a car company that should have failed years ago
7) when it tells banks who and why to lend money to in the name of ‘fairness’

[muawiyah]

Of course the Founders liked government. They created governments all over the place both before and after the American Revolution, and conducted the Revolution under the authority of the Continental Congress ~ a government agency.

Our Founders probably knew more about the practical side of creating governments than any other people on Earth at any time in history. They had a substantially vacant territory to organize and settle.

CNN's various commenters and gurus have absolutely no idea what "small government" means ~

[ScottinVA]

I guess Julian has difficulty separating national security from welfare, 0bamaCare, and other forms of largesse. Of course, libs can never see the value of a strong military.

[pallis]

Funny how government gets bigger and bigger while everything that makes the US great gets smaller and smaller. It’s the liberal way. Their thinking is that once the US is diminished to nothing, we won’t need a military to protect it.

[Nip]

While President Eisenhower warned us of the danger of the military-industrial complex he failed to tell us about its benefits.

IMHO Sara sees both sides of the issue and she has decided that the benefits, epically now, out weigh the potential risks.

A strongly funded and manned military will:
1. Develop new, dual use, technologies that will make our futures better.
Proof of statement?
The Internet, compact computers, and life saving medical technologies just coming off the battlefield are but a few of these.
2. Return to a draft of some type.
Proof of statement?
Our society depends on a highly trained workforce and the military is the only organization that can produce thousands of trained and experience technical workers annually. Our life style has been, and is currently, funded by the military.
Proof of statement?
a. The training provided during and after WW2 gave us the greatest generation and the wealth that came with it.
b. How is a high school graduate going to afford, dollars and time, technical training in computers, mechanical arts, and medical arts in today's and tomorrow's world? If we can not afford an upward path for our high school graduates, including GEDs, we WILL become a North American Greece.
Final proof - what have all of our nontechnical PhD’s done to add to our GDP? Printing books on arcane subjects and teaching clones don't count on the floor of Wall Street - otherwise colleges would be listed on the big board, wouldn't they.

[FreeperDoll]

Sarah sounded Presidential, whereas obozo sounds duffus

[MEGoody]

Lefties like to portray us as not wanting any government at all. That’s their best attempt at making us look like loons. Of course we want government - as laid out in the Constitution - as envisioned by our founding fathers. What we don’t want is socialism/communism/facism.

[piytar]

You beat me to it. The fact that national defense is (a) Constitutionally mandated and (b) wholly in keeping with conservative principles is something leftists just can’t grasp. It almost like they collectively suffer from some type of mental illness...