That’s the question Daniel Henninger asks in his WSJ column today. (The answer is NO.)
The column isn’t so much about history, though, as the current uproar against the ever-expanding entitlement/nanny/warden state. Henninger writes, “The political issue rumbling toward both the Supreme Court and the electorate is whether Washington’s size and power has finally grown beyond the comfort zone of the American people.”
Yes and no. There are a lot of Americans who are perfectly comfortable with the size and power of the government and want to see it bigger yet. They’re the tax consumers. They think they’re entitled to more and more of the wealth that’s produced by others and confiscated and redistributed by politicians. It doesn’t bother them in the least that this regime is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. They don’t concern themselves with the long-run vitality of the economy.
Government union chiefs, for example, never stop demanding more and expecting the public to pay up. They find the size and power of government very comfortable.
The looming battle is between those who produce and those who want to keep living (more and more lavishly) at the expense of others.
