Touché
As a progressive I do believe in using the government to improve the lives of the citizenry. Such as using progressive taxation to ensure everyone has access to health care and a college education or heavily regulating industry to ensure the well being of the people and the planet isn’t compromised in the name of the profit motive.
The government can be a very useful tool, but it depends on how we wield it. The government as it currently stands, heavily in the pockets of corporations and stacked with career politicians only interested in accumulating more influence and power, is NOT a tool of the people. It would take term limits and serious campaign finance reform to start getting the government on track to being the kind of government this progressive would want.
In the meantime, there are definitely things I think the government should NOT be doing. Collecting taxes to make services available to all Americans is a great thing, in my opinion. Monitoring the communications of citizens without probable cause is not. So this program saves lives. I am still against it. DUI checkpoints save lives. I am against those. Stop and frisk probably saved lives. Yep, I’m against it. As my conservative friends often point out in the gun control threads, freedom is inherently dangerous.
In the liberty vs security equation, the increase in security has to be MUCH greater than the liberty that is given up to satisfy me. And since the risk of an American being the victim of a terrorist attack is miniscule, all these programs in the name of the War on Terror are crap.