Grover Norquist a leading Republican has said: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Drowning the government is equivalent to drowning children the elderly, the poor and the sick, and Norquist got his wish. At least a thousand people, most of them Democrats, black, and poor - drowned in the New Orleans basin. It would be overly paranoid to say that this was planned but it certainly can be said that it was expectable after Bush drastically cut the funds for the Army Corps of Engineers who would have reinforced the levies, and put an Arabian horse expert and failed executive in charge of FEMA.
However it was not GWB who began the process that inevitably led to this disaster. It has been going on for over twenty years when after the defeat of Barry Golwater a handful of corporations invested several billion dollars to launch a Right Wing take-over of our government. And I was with Ronald Reagan that the deliberate and intentional destruction of the US government took hold. Quote Reagan: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
The neo-Nietzshian neo-cons don't "believe" in government, in anything other than a military and police capacity. Government should punish, but it should never nurture, protect, or defend individuals. Nurturing and protecting, they suggest, is the more appropriate role of religious institutions, private charities, families, and - most cynically - corporations. Let the corporations control environmental protection, medical care and old-age pensions
That is not the vision the Founders of this nation fought and died for. That government should "promote the general welfare" – was written into the preamble to our Constitution in 1787.
The reason Republicans want to remove government in its protective capacity is because they can then make an enormous amount of money when they privatize former governmental functions. And ultimately they would not really mind if as many of the poor and feeble died off--as soon as "humanely" possible, and stopped “draining” our budget with their needs. They got their wish partially fulfilled with Katrina.
And yet when Middle-Americans hear "smaller government," they nod their heads in agreement, not realizing the hidden agenda at work, an agenda which is beginning to affect all of us. Have the American people had enough? I hope so. It can all be reversed at the ballot box,
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