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by Jesse Lee
OpEdNews.com

About a decade ago, Newt Gingrich, Frank Luntz, and a host of others got hip to the ability of imaginative language to make up into down, or as Orwell put it, two and two into five. If you have never seen the famous Gingrich memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," you are missing a key moment in the metamorphosis of the GOP from a party making some attempt to represent any large segment of the population to the boundlessly cynical corporate interest monstrosity we see today. From the memo...

This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that, like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used...

Out of this abandonment of policy and reality in favor of twisted rhetoric and a concocted alternative reality, one term emerged triumphant: "Big Government." A google search of the term will turn up "about 193,000" results - and you will see that the conservative echo chamber has demonstrated enough integrity to turn on George Bush as the "big government conservative." Not quite enough integrity to propose rolling back the tax cuts, or any specific program cuts they might make to balance the budget, but enough to continue spitting out this term like automatons. It is ingrained, even if it was never really made sense of. But if record budget deficits three years running would seem to be enough to stifle the use of this bludgeon by Republican politicians, you need read no more than the title of this Tom DeLay release last year:

Dems Reveal True Swinging-Seventies Selves; Big-Government, Blame-America-First Liberalism Died with Disco.

Indeed, Tom DeLay, a figure at such a pivotal point in the GOP merger with their massive multi-national donor base and with such a Republican district that he feels himself invincible (always a tragic flaw), has become the chief faucet for meticulously crafted attack dog rhetoric. And reading through that release, one sees that the topic of "big government" is never even mentioned; spending of any kind goes entirely unaddressed. But rather than simply turn the term around on the Republicans as their echo chamber has, let us take a closer look. Conservative pundits often point to the Medicare bill, referred to by another such term - "entitlement expansion," as a primary beef with the current GOP's "big government conservatism." But GOP politicians look past that, and instead refer to attempts to introduce collective bargaining into the bill (thereby fulfilling the promise of the bill to seriously reduce prices). Government should not be interfering in the free market to affect prices, they say - ignoring the fact that government enforced monopolies are at the root of the prescription drug price crisis. But a "free market" should be free for the consumer just as it is free for the producer. And here we see how the idea of "big government" is used to obscure the question of whether it is good government or bad government. Granting that legally enforced monopolies are justified to avoid companies eating the costs of research for a tiny share of the profit, what is the natural course of action for the free people of our nation? Naturally, it would be to gather together and use our bargaining power to balance out any attempt to price gouge. But of course the task of organizing nearly 300,000,000 people to do so would be virtually impossible. This is where government - good government - comes in.

It was an acknowledged truth by our nation's founders that government is a necessary evil, and the complex system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution was meant to keep that evil at bay. The theme of "big government" means to be an extension of this idea. But that does not mean that government is incapable of doing good, and it certainly does not mean that we should pass up such opportunities when they arrive. But now, at a time when the government can optimally be used by the people to serve their own good, the GOP denies the people what is essentially their right and fends off critics with their rhetorical bludgeon.

Contrast this with another more recent vote. Overcoming several obstacles just to do so, Democrats brought up the library-search clause of the Patriot Act for repeal. This allows DoJ to search libraries records, virtually at will, and bars librarians from ever discussing such searches. A better example of "Big Government," or the "evil" of government would be difficult to come by. Yet as it was becoming clear that the GOP would lose the vote, Republican Leadership again sprang into action and over the bounds of Democratic governance, held the vote open for an extra half hour in violation of House Rules. Thus just one example of the breakdown of the checks and balances so carefully designed to check the evils of government.

But of course this pales in comparison to the now-famous memo regarding interrogations claiming the right of the President to "set aside" both domestic law and international treaties. In this memo, the administration's lawyers attempted to essentially sever the bonds holding the executive to the will of the people, arguing that the executive transcended the citizenry. Sovereignty no longer rested with the people, but with the President, who now was uninhibited from expressing his will not only over Americans, but over the entire human race. Perhaps the words "Big Government" are not strong enough.

Democrats simply wish a return to government of, for, and by the people - not against them. With a trillion in debt being piled on our children and ourselves every two years, the "bigness" of government has become an absurdity - Democrats argue only that government should be good.