re #39: Early public health efforts were state affairs, not federal affairs; they involved mostly quarantines, an exercise of the police power. These implemented the results of research that occurred mostly at private universities such as Harvard, which in the early 20th century did not receive federal funding. In the cases that the research occurred in the federal government, it was associated with the military (malaria research in Cuba and the Philippines).
I think we can all benefit by a dialing back of the rhetoric. While purist libertarians advocate a government that attends only to defense against force and fraud, conservatives see a place for government attention to roads and other infrastructure that serve the citizen as citizen. There is also a place for objective regulation that is rationally related to common concerns, such as the regulation of drugs for safety. What is odious to conservatives is the whole project of entitlement, the notion that government exists in order to redistribute wealth from one faction to another, as well as all the intrusive apparatus of a dog-eat-dog socialistic state.
