The Danger of Big Government

I was reading a speech that Dennis Prager, a talk radio show host gave to the Republican members of Congress at their retreat this week.  He gives a really good simplified explanation as to why Big government is bad. 
“And finally, theme four: I have a motto that I offer to you because this is the ultimate moral case for us: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”
We have to learn to make our complex beliefs simple — though never simplistic. And this is our powerful response to government doing more and more for people: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”
And here’s how we explain it: The bigger the government, the less I do for myself, for my family, and for my community. That is why we Americans give more charity and devote more time to volunteering than Europeans do. The European knows: the government, the state, will take care of me, my children, my parents, my neighbors, and my community. I don’t have to do anything. The bigger question in many Europeans’ lives is, “How much vacation time will I have and where will I spend that vacation?”
America became great by working hard.  That’s what makes you a good person.  Working hard and then giving of yourself.  We can’t let the government take that opportunity from us or our children.  It seems crazy that we should have to fight for the opportunity and the right to work hard and be successful ON OUR OWN, but fight we must or we will become a small, selfish kind of people.

I recently found an old article in the WSJ by Mark Steyn called the State Despotic in which he quotes from Dr. Paul Rahe, author of a new book called Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift.  In it he says "When something goes wrong, a European demands to know what the government's going to do about it. An American does it himself."  "Human dignity," writes Professor Rahe, "is bound up with taking responsibility for conducting one's own affairs."  Steyn concludes, "When the state annexes that responsibility, the citizenry are indeed mere sheep to the government shepherd."  (paraphrasing from Alexis De Toqueville)
It is our human dignity we must fight for.

Prager continues:
“That is what happens when the state gets bigger — you become smaller. The dream of America was that the individual was to be a giant. The state stays small so as to enable each of us to be as big as we can be. We are each created in God’s image. The state is not in God’s image, but it is vying to be that. This is the battle you’re fighting. You are fighting a cosmic battle, because this is the most important society ever devised, the United States of America.”
In response to Prager’s comment that “the state is not in God’s image, but is vying to be that.” I would say that big government, that is, having government give everything to you and dictate how you live so that all can be equal and safe and healthy is NOT God’s plan at all, but Satan’s.  That is how he wanted to do things.  To send us here to earth and then control everything we do, make all our decisions for us so that everyone returned home safe and sound.  God’s way is to let everyone choose.  Choose to work, choose to give, choose the right, or choose the wrong.  When we have those choices taken away from us we become small.  Character is developed through making choices and learning from them.  I fought for that right in Heaven and it looks like the fight will continue even here.  It is indeed a “cosmic battle”.