"big government liberals"

From Eschaton in response to a post made by conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan:

I don't know any "big government liberals" in the sense that Andy means. I don't know anybody who gets a stiffy at the thought of raising taxes and increasing government spending as a share of GDP just for the hell of it. Liberals I know tend to think there are things government should do and we should, roughly, figure out how to pay for those things, though we're not entirely allergic to deficit spending. When taxes have to go up to cover interest and debt repayment costs no liberals I know are going to go "YAY! HIGHER TAXES! WOO HOOO!"

For a long time the Left was tarred as idealistic utopians, addicted to ways of doing things no matter what the consequences. I have no real opinion on whether that criticism was ever true, but in any case it's something which has been embraced wholesale by the Right. They have a small government fetish, and that fetish is linked almost entirely to the top marginal federal income tax rate. Liberals have no such corresponding fetish for "big government" even if they tend to be fans of some government programs conservatives like to demonize as being "big government liberalism." No one's going to enjoy sweeping up after Bush's fiscal train wreck.

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This kind of echoes something I was saying saying last week when I was writing about Paul Craig Roberts:

Roberts reminds me that I'm less of a liberal and more of a pragmatist. That is, I have a certain set of social goals, food, clothing, shelter, and health care for all, for instance, that I want to see achieved, but I don't really care how we get there: if conservative programs can do it, then sign me up. It just so happens that most conservatives don't really seem to care about my social goals, so it's progressivism for me, for now.

I should clarify at this point, that this is not to be construed as meaning that someday I might again embrace conservatism. Even though I think there are some good conservative ideas, generally I want change, lots of change, which makes me forevermore a bleeding-hearted liberal. However, as a liberal, I want to keep an open mind about how that change can be accomplished, which means seriously considering conservative ideas and proposals.

All of this means that I may or may not be a "big government liberal" depending on the circumstances--sometimes my assertions may even make me look like a "small government conservative." But then, as Atrios observes, the term "big government liberal" is so weird and vague as to not have any real meaning. I don't want more government for its own sake. Really, even suggesting such a thing is downright insulting. Who the hell wants more government just because? This particular government I certainly don't want more of. No, I believe that government does both good and bad things. I want to see it do more of the good and less of the bad. Or, ideally, as much good as possible, and as little bad as possible.

That seems sensible to me, but the conservative notion of smaller government being better just because simply boggles my mind. It's almost like a religious belief. All bureaucracies suffer a certain amount of waste and inefficiency, and this includes the businesses that conservatives prize so highly as a model for organizational performance. What I really think is that the whole small government meme came out of conservative frustration with decades of Democratic dominance in Washington: not being able to implement their own programs, conservatives simply began to rail away on the concept of government itself. See what's happened now that the GOP is in power? Government has continued to grow, picking up the pace even, and while the small government concept survives rhetorically, it is essentially dead in practice.

Apparently, everybody is in favor of big governement when it's doing what they want it to do.

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