Reducing the Size of Government, While Increasing It

WHAT WE HAVE ALL LONG SUSPECTED turns out to be true. Congress passed the "Patriot Act" over a decade ago in a hysterical response to nine one one, to the toppling of the trade towers. It gave the American federal government much expanded powers of surveillance, particularly surveillance of its own citizenry. Or perhaps the Patriot Act wasn't so much a response, as an excuse, an excuse, in the name of "the war on terror", an excuse to finally establish and put into place, once and for all, the great American police state. Quite a chain of events. George Bush 41 encourages Saddam to invade Kuwait, the U.S. becomes involved in the middle east more deeply than ever, and the corporate masters succeed in gaining vast oil resources, great personal wealth, and absolute control over us. Simply ingenious. And the American Police State has vastly abused its powers by spying on the American people totally above and beyond the powers granted to it in the Patriot Act. A federal court recently demonstrated this sad fact. Our big brother has in fact, during the last decade, found out everything there is to know about all of us, and has all that info stored, organized, and ready. This is beyond anything in "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley or "1984" by George Orwell. This is the real thing, here and now. Interestingly, nobody seems to care all that much, as if the body politic is a great slumbering beast. Fascinatingly, the Patriot Act's staunchest defenders are the most conservative, anti-big government republicans, like Senators Tom Cotton and Richard Byrd. How, exactly, Senators, does the Patriot Act reduce the size of government, gentlemen? These small government conservative republicans want to cut spending and government bureaucracy by reducing or getting rid of welfare programs for poor people, and they don't want national health care, because they believe in "small government", but they want to turn America into a police state, and already have. And that certainly is not "small" government.