As a libertarian (small 'L")--I wish wish wish there was some way to add that and/or 'classical liberal' to the political lean list--I am for a strong but small, efficient, effective, necessary central government as the Founders envisioned it. But in all things be pragmatic. it is NECESSARY for the federal government to defend our borders, because if the border states cannot and will not or do not, the consequences can affect all the states. It is NECESSARY for the government to regulate what products can be legally imported into the country as there is no way to protect say Oklahoma from a dangerous product imported into Texas.
I don't think we have to abolish the Dept. of Education but bust it down to an agency under say Health and Human Services and make it useful for the states instead of a dictatorial agency. A staff of maybe 20 or 30 people could collect data from all over the country--test scores, college entrance requirements, available curriculum, and such--and make that available to the states and/or school systems or even individual schools requesting it so they can evaluate how they are doing compared to other states and/or schools, develop curriculum to help students qualify for college, and have access to important resources that they need. The Education Dept. would then need a tiny fraction of the $68 billion annual budget it now has, would no longer be doing unconstitutional federal meddling into education, and would be invaluable for the public and private schools.
The U.S. government is an enormous, bloated, and growing bureaucratic nightmare that is sucking more and more resources out of the economy while being less and less responsive to the actual needs of the people. There are so many ways it could be made smaller, more efficient, more useful, more effective in what it MUST do, not to mention less intrusive and much less expensive while being a government of the people FOR the people again.
While they might surely tweak it here and there, I think most American conservatives/libertarians would relate to my argument here as pro-American.
I think most Democrats/progressives/modern day American liberals would see and characterize my argument as anti-government or wanting to destroy the government. And America will be seen as something at least somewhat bad because such arguments exist.
