Big Monster Post Warning 
I'll dig up a list of the ridiculous things taxpayers are paying for here in NH in a bit, with sources. I have notes for that somewhere. It's been bothering me more lately as since Lynch was elected he's been, as any fimrly democratic politician, working towards making taxes higher and making the government control more organizations.
Quote: "The government's job is to merely protect our rights and that is it. It is not a force for corrective social good. Merely, an impersonal body guard."
Yes-- for two simple reasons:
1. If a government is given power as a corrective social force,
that power will lead to corruption. It is quite simply inevitable-- as long as there is a system where organized group of represenitives have any strong position of power, that power will be abused for the common benefit of that group. Case in simple point, the degredation of both major US parties as the country have veered further toward the left in recent decades (if you wish to debate that last point, we could pursue that too, but I'm not sure if you would agree with me or not).
2. Force of good is relative. (and corrective is a very dangerous term, but that's a tangent to this topic.) As long as a democratic government is trying to be a force of good in people's lives rather than a force that protects their liberties, it will be manaing
the popular idea of good. To some, for example, the war on drugs is an excellent cause. But they're only looking at it from a moral point of view, considering their own perception of it, rather than also an ethical point of view, considering how they should apply their own morals to others. An ethical individual respects other people's opinions and allows them to live their own lives-- an ethical government should do the same. But as long as the government is trying to maintain
good in society, it will only be enforcing a single worldview upon people who have a right to live their lives their own way. How can this be seen as ethical? Why should the majority have the power to
correct the minority
Is that not a deeply unsettling concept? It's already in action all over America and has been for quite a while. 51% vote for water flouridation and 49% of the state are forced-- effectively, at gunpoint-- to recieve a medication they have no interest in, in a dose they can not control, in an amount they can not measure. 51% vote for gun registration because they don't feel safe with firearms around them and 49% are now less capable of defending themselves.
Perhaps it would strike home a bit more if I used examples more at odds with (what I believe to be, I may be wrong
) your own worldview. Should a Catholic majority be able to enforce their religion upon a religiously diversified minority? Should a firearm-bearing majority be able to enforce their opinion that owning guns is safer upon a minority, forcing them to own guns?
These may seem unlikely but if history has proven one thing, is that if a tool to do evil is available, it will be used. The downhill slope from a government that does "reasonable" things like preventing 12 year olds from buying alchohol, driving trucks or buying firearms to a government that utterly controls and restricts everyone's life is one without a single place to stall or stop, and there sure as hell isn't any way to turn around. We're heading down that slope right now.
The point I am ultimatly making is that if a democratic government is used as a "corrective social" force, there is no controlling how far it will go, no controlling how fair it will be, and no controlling how much harm it will do. A government that, as you put it, is "merely an impersonal body guard", on the other hand, has a strict and irrefutable set of guidelines holding it in place. It does not exist to tamper with the social climate and thus it can not be used as a tool to harm it.
Now I'm not saying I believe that the other extreme must be ideal either. I think there's a line somewhere, a line between preventing kids from buying vodka and preventing adults from buying beer; a line between enforcing mental care for a completely insane individual and enforcing mental care for anyone who scores lower than 90 on a government enforced IQ test. I'm not sure just where that line is. I do know we would be far worse off if the government did not take some effort to act as a social force-- in that, I suppose, I'm not completely libertarian. The problem is, once it starts, it won't stop, and it can't
be stopped. As far as I'm aware a government that started sliding in the direction of social control has never stopped in even vaguely recent history.
There is no way at all of enforcing that line.
I'm rambling more than a little bit here. To sum up what I'm saying: There are big problems; the far right, in terms of a government that does not touch socail issues at all, is not an answer, but actively moving further to the left is only going to hurt the situation more and more.
(chuckle. so much for the 'simple reasons' part
)
Perhaps there is no answer and it boils down to the fact that every good government will eventually erode, degrade and ultimatly collapse, through explosion or implosions. History certainly provides a nice case for that.
