Instapundit takes one of his inadvisable trips out of passive-aggressively quoting people and then pretending that he’s not actually saying anything to argue that the federal government is illegitimate. 

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This is boilerplate American history, and something that Americans—and, in particular, America’s political class—have long taken for granted.

But now things are looking a bit dicey. According to a recent Rasmussen Poll , only 21 percent of American voters believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. On the other hand, Rasmussen notes, a full 63 percent of the “political class” believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.

“Consent of the governed” is a standard whose meaning is debatable even for people who actually study political science - does it mean unanimous consent?  Does it mean that all people in the nation have a say in electing their representatives?  Does it allow for an executive with power to appoint officials with enforcement and lawmaking capacity?  These are remarkably complex questions for which there is no satisfactory answer; I’m pretty sure that if anyone is going to answer them, it’s not the sample selection of a Rasmussen poll. 

Of course, Rasmussen does have its “political class” designation, which is based on a rigorous three-question screening process which has the same sort of carefully measured calibration as the animatronic puppets at Chuck E. Cheese asking you if you like fun and pizza.  If you don’t, I’m pretty sure you’re Harry Reid.

So, Rasmussen conducted an essentially meaningless poll showing that the vast majority of “Mainstream Americans” don’t believe that the government lives up to some nebulous and undefined standard of governance, which is as close to scientific evidence as Tea Partiers will ever come.

Let’s roll with it.

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Before I begin this post, I don’t understand why Breitbart’s Big Government is called Big Government.  They’re supposed to hate Big Government, and they talk about it in every post, but since the title of the blog is also the thing they hate, it sounds like they spend every post talking about what a terrible site they run.  Which they should.

Anyway.

Some dude at Big Government is writing about how the GOP needs to embrace the legalization of online gambling, because opposing it is (you guessed it) BIG GOVERNMENT. 

For one, those who oppose online poker rights keep Republicans off-message.  After all, it is hard to make an argument that we need the government to protect us from ourselves, then subsequently argue that Americans ought to be trusted with credit cards, mortgages, guns, cigarettes, snack food, soft drinks, and other freedoms that are under attack from the left. 

[...]

Additionally, the 2006 anti-gaming law — the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act — championed by big government “conservatives” has been a complete failure.

So, you see, using the power of the federal government to ban gambling is Big Government.  But…wait.  Apparently, government allowing gambling is also Big Government!  Sez Timothy in comments:

A law against online gambling has nothing to do with the size of government. Seriously. Absolutely nothing. A bureaucracy created with the goal of “taxing online poker sites, mandating safeguards against underage participation, mandating protections for those with excessive gaming habits, and providing consumer protections for the millions of Americans who play Internet poker every day”, now THAT increases the size of the government. But simple laws (“Don’t murder a dude,” “Don’t come into our country without a visa,” “Don’t gamble online you moron”) are the right and proper role of government.

Then ccwasabi says:

And i don’t think the republicans should listen to them - the republican party should be conservative and stick to conservative principles i.e. using big government to determine the morality of gambling etc.

They start getting Randian, and then fundamentalist, and shit just goes haywire, because there’s no way for anything to happen with respect to the government allowing or prohibiting online poker without some form of government involvement.  There’s the option of a laissez faire attitude towards it, just letting it continue on, but there’s no way that a competitive enterprise involving hundreds of millions of dollars passing through unseen hands in multiple countries is going to go unregulated, especially when you start talking about the potential for the American legal system to be involved in settling disputes.

This is the main problem with the “big government” critique - what it essentially means is “the government doing something I don’t like”.  Governments have grants of power.  Those grants of power may be limited or may be far reaching, and are usually written in such a way that they’ll routinely butt up against unforeseen circumstances like this. 

“Big government” is the ultimate No True Scotsman fallacy, and it’s why small government conservatives are always going to be whiny and dissatisfied.  Government becomes big when it pursues goals you dislike, and is within its “limited mandate” when you share its goals.  It means absolutely nothing, because government is always promoting liberty when it’s promoting the liberties you like.  The big/small government frame just places it in a fabricated economic context - which, incidentally, has the bonus side effect of always making “small government” always seem cheaper and more efficient. 

It’s the danger but also the downfall of the Tea Party movement.  They have a powerful message that encapsulates a wide swath of anger, but the only reason the message is so powerful is because it allows a rather large diaspora of angry people to pretend that everyone’s angry for the same reasons they are.  It’s when push comes to shove and you actually have to start describing what it is that you’re angry about that the coalition fractures like some…fragile thing that fractures.  I need to work on my metaphors. 

Jonah Goldberg endorses a proposition by Will Wilkinson that we may judge philosophies by the trail of their dead:

Here is a good debate proposition: It ought to be less embarrassing to have been influenced by Ayn Rand than by Karl Marx.

The most powerful way to argue the affirmative is to compare the number of human beings murdered by the devotees of each. That line of attack ought to be decisive, but I’m afraid it won’t get you far with the multitude of highly-self-regarded thinkers influenced by Karl Marx.

As someone who doesn’t consider himself a Marxist, let me tell you about my new philosophy: Kill Everyone West Of The Mississippism.  I made it up approximately three minutes ago, I am its only adherent, and its only tenet is that those living west of the Mississippi River (going around the globe until you reach the eastern bank of the river, so this includes everyone) must die.  And die painfully.

Now, I’m pretty that that some Objectivist, somewhere, has murdered someone.  No adherent to my ideology has committed a crime worse than speeding.  Even then, there are questions about the radar gun.  By this standard, my philosophy of glorious, indiscriminate murder is less embarrassing than Objectivism.  I think Objectivism is an asinine, unworkable philosophy that has influenced fewer people than Marxism because most people grow out of susceptibility to it by age 14, but I still think it’s more respectable than my new philosophy of subsidizing heroin use by minors and killing everyone. 

I await Mr. Wilkinson’s rebuttal.