Taki Magazine

I know few liberals who support the War on Drugs, marriage “protection” amendments or the PATRIOT Act. In fact, if you talk to the most vocal Leftists about drug criminalization, gay marriage or the loss of civil liberties, their anti-government rhetoric can sound downright reactionary. “Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers” said John C. Calhoun. Today, much of the American Left agrees with him.

So how do liberals square their fear of intrusive government with their enthusiasm for Obama? The opposite question could also be asked - how did so many conservatives square their fear of big government with their enthusiasm for President Bush, whose unprecedented spending and increasing of the power of the state set the stage for Obama? Sadly, most liberals or conservatives never think in such terms. Bush Republicans had no problem with big government so long as their guy was in charge of it and now the same is true of Obama Democrats.

When a number of states passed state sovereignty resolutions recently, though these measures came from right-wing resistance to Obama’s statism, the Left would do well to take note.