The Biggest Lie in PoliSci
“The central ideological conflict in the United States is over the size and scope of government”
This is something you’ll probably hear if you take US Politics & Government at the college level or AP Gov in highschool. It’s also completely false.
It’s not only wrong in terms of how it cuts off extra-establishment discourse, totally erasing radical thought from US politics. It’s wrong in how it represents the establishment discourse. George W. Bush expanded the federal government more than Bill Clinton and Obama combined. Ron Paul wants to get government out of the market but put it in female reproductive systems. The desired size and scope of government is whatever a given establishment ideology needs it to be to enact their program. There’s no ideology in the Liberal Social Order that’s unequivocally for less government.
If someone tells you this, they are deliberately (though, ironically, perhaps unknowingly) working to limit the discourse to the established boundaries of the Liberal Social Order. Recognize this and use it against them.
It’s exactly what I was taught in high school at the basic level.
(Source: ghost-of-algren)
