Political Epistemology vs. Government Said to be Limited

An apt illustration in the field of taxation can be usefully given as an analogous matter; the percentage of what the government takes in taxes is the true cause of what can logically result in over-taxation or confiscatory taxation; thus, the mere effect is the system of taxation, whether a progressive tax, flat tax, value-added tax, etc., that is, in effect, a mere diversion to simply take the minds of the people away from the actual percentage of tax being extracted.   

Thus, e. g., Dr. Walter E. Williams, a prominent free-market economist, carefully reminds people that the method or system of taxation is not really at all the extremely critical question regarding taxation; as examples often used, a flat tax v. progressive tax is, therefore, not truly the primary and critical issue in such a consideration or debate.   Intelligent minds are, moreover, able to then correctly and properly distinguish cause from effect.

If, therefore, a theoretically large political establishment were guaranteeing more than just sufficient prosperity for the citizenry by, e. g., allowing a true free-market economy to somehow really flourish unmolested, then such an expanded governmental presence could be then uniquely hailed as good government, not Big Government.  

The true problem is, as Dr. Milton Friedman had often tellingly remarked, if the American people ever got all the government they had paid for, they would be then living under a police-state tyranny.  Informed intellects, as can be seen, sagaciously do realize that the genuine issue is not an attempt to, supposedly, somehow achieve the fictional or utopian goal of a limited government, as desired by conservatives.

Conclusion

As understood, so correctly, by the political supporters of the traditionalist right, government qua governance, as rightfully pertaining to the basic and needful things that it ought to do, is what should  be properly stressed. 

The original understanding of the original purpose of the Constitution is what can be properly referred to as the boundaries of what the Federal political establishment refers to, meaning as to its noted and legitimate responsibilities of a limited, meaning described/written, nature.  And yet, the real question or issue at stake ought never to be simply put as being limited government versus Big Government per se.

For instance, since nothing in that document authorizes a Department of Education, then it can be known, by the definition of a written constitution, that the national government has, therefore, no legitimate business in the field of administering matters pertaining to national education. 

The Preamble, explicitly, states the formal basics, as to the direct political principles involved, of what that political charter is only supposed to cover and nothing more as to the objects and ends of its noted grant of power.   And, The Federalist Papers explain, among other appropriate sources, how the Federal government was properly constructed to operate toward the given goals of a constitutional kind; Publius (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay) details, therefore, the political epistemology requisite and needed for a free, constitutional, republican government of laws, not men.

Thus, e. g., being “for or against” limited government is a gross absurdity and, moreover, not a real political question at all, except, perhaps, for some abstractionizing political theoreticians.  The authentic Tory attitude is, forever, well expressed by Alexander Pope, who wrote:  “For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.”