Especially since as an educator I typically travel in left-learning circles, when people find out that I’d rather that government were smaller and more decentralized, they sometimes get the wrong impression that I might be sympathetic to the Republicans. Not only is that not true now, that has actually never been true.
As Barack Obama says, “Let me be clear.”
Republicans have never meant it when it comes to being the party of small government. Never. Not about taxes, not about spending, not about federalism, not about separation of powers, not about judicial restraint, not about freedom of religion, not about gun rights, not about wars, not about free speech.
They have promised modest, decentralized government my whole life and never missed an opportunity to prove that all they really want is power and control.
On the contrary, I’ve watched them go from—correctly—referring to ATF agents as jackbooted thugs after the Waco and Ruby Ridge massacres to building their own latter-day Schutzstaffel to run wild in our cities.
For a long time I avoided using Nazi rhetoric to describe this administration. By nature, I’m not an “everyone I don’t like is Hitler” sort of person. But I’m also not blind, so as Bob Marley sang, “Who the cap fit, let them wear it.”
So the bottom line is this: the Republicans must be defeated and made sure never to be allowed anywhere near political power ever again. And I say that not despite being a proponent of smaller government, but because I am one. I say it because the Republicans have taught me that Karl Popper was right to warn us about the paradox of tolerance. Simply put, I want my children and grandchildren to live in a pluralistic, cosmopolitan, and prosperous society, and the Republicans have conclusively demonstrated that they are the enemy of such a society, and have nothing to offer in its place other than violence, hatred, and fear.