Source: "Public Works: When ‘Big Government’ Plays Its Role" By ADAM COHEN - NY Times - November 13, 2007
It is “socialized medicine,” and it forces “all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program.” From this program, “it’s a short step to all the rest of socialism.”
If you know your health care history, you know the person who leveled these charges was Ronald Reagan, and you know that he leveled them against Medicare. His opposition to the program – which he predicted would force Americans “to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free” – helped turn him from an actor into a conservative star in the early 1960s.
Source: "Obamacare and Reagan" - by David Leonhardt - NY Times - 6/26/2015
The issue is, and always has been, effective versus ineffective government, not big government versus small government.
Source: Gary Hart - Kittredge, Colo., Dec. 1, 2005 (NY Times - Letters to the Editor)
Conservatives often justify tax cuts by insisting that individuals can spend the money better than the government.
But can you build a street from your house to your workplace better than the government? Can you hire a police force to protect you and your home from thugs and criminals better than the government? Can you hire an army to protect you and your home from foreign threats better than the government? Can you erect levees and flood walls to protect your costal property better than the government? Can you fund medical research that creates the drug that saves your life better than the government? Can you hire a set of teachers and build a school that will educate your children better than the government? Can you staff a fire department that will be ready to extinguish your house should it catch fire better than the government? Can you research the safety of food and consumer products to ensure their safety better than the government? Can you perform a mechanical inspection of a commercial airplane before you board better than the government?
This could go on and on, but the point is that there are some things that we do communally that we could never do individually. Government is simply the organization that facilitates our communal efforts. To say that we must either act communally or individually is a false choice. There are clearly arenas where we are better off individually making contributions to a communal effort. That’s what taxes are.
"And while my heart goes out to people on fixed incomes, it is primarily a state and local responsibility. And in my opinion, it's the responsibility of faith-based organizations, of churches and charities and others to help those people," [former FEMA director, Michael Brown, at a Congressional inquiry] said in one wildly cynical bit of sworn testimony before the House.
If Mr. Brown was so dedicated to coordination, he should have been coordinating the effort to get those refugees to safety, not waiting for the church ladies and the Rotarians - who were also flooded out of their homes.
Source: "Actually, It Was FEMA's Job" - NY Times - 10/2/05
"[I]n June 1944 (FDR) signed into law the GI Bill."
"Because of the GI Bill the doors of colleges and universities were blown open for the middle and lower classes, the book notes, The number of college grads more than doubled between 1940 and 1950.
By the cutoff date of July 25, 1956, 2,232,000 vets had enrolled in college using the GI Bill. "The education produced 450,000 engineers, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 22,000 dentists, and more than a million other college trained men and women."
Nearly 8 million vets benefited from the GI Bill with 11 million homes being built in the 1950s, financed by GI Bill loans. Amazing how neocons completely ignore such things when chastising "liberals" about free-market panaceas and how government programs only make things worse.
Source: Sean Gonsalves - Cape Cod Times -2/28/05 quoting from "The Bonus Army: An American Epic" by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen.
This spoken-word album from 1961 helped make Reagan a conservative star.
Source: NY Times