My overall feeling -- in a very broad sense -- is that government tends to make things worse. We write bad laws. We waste money. Therefore, we ought to always push for smaller, more limited government.
Foreign assistance? Best way to avoid a mistake is to not have any.
Regulation of health care? Avoid problems by simply not making regulations.
Government schools? Get rid of them.
The government has proven itself incompetent on every level, for decades and decades. People need to see it as a fixable problem. Start by cutting the federal budget by 50%.
“Start by cutting the federal budget by 50%.”
Amen to that. What a lot of people were seeing during the government shutdown has become increasingly “normal” here in the NYC metro area. I hike in state parks, and a lake that was damaged by Hurricane Irene (not Sandy; Irene a year earlier) hasn’t re-opened because there is no money to fix it (there is a now-old sign telling visitors the beach is closed, and to visit a neighboring one). Our roads are in horrible shape, police protection is thinned, and even this is unaffordable. Our government (at all levels) has wasted a lot of money for decades...