'How to Make America Disappear'

“Of course there has been a ‘libertarian country’ before,” Robert Tracinski writes at the Federalist.

“We’re it. Or at least we were, for roughly the first 150 years of our existence—which, far from being some sort of fairy tale or collective delusion, was probably the most successful period ever in the history of any nation.”

As Tracinski notes:

I’ve recently been seeing the revival of an odd line of argument I hear from the left now and again. In response to the launch of Rand Paul’s presidential campaign, for example, I heard it said that Paul’s vision for a much smaller government, for eliminating so many agencies and regulations, was a fantasy of a “libertarian country” that has never existed. The implication is that radically smaller government is a new idea that has never been tried.

Similarly, in response to my suggestion that maybe we should stop basing our government on massive, omnipresent coercion of the citizenry, the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent replied:

@Tracinski @chrisrlloyd @ryanlcooper It is an utter fantasy to imagine a return to pre-industrial state role of govt. A fairy tale.

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 9, 2015

Yeah, unstopped growth of socialist government usually ends, rather painfully for all concerned:

You can never have enough Government. pic.twitter.com/162Ysp9LwF — State Control™ (@State_Control) April 14, 2015

But I’m sure it will work this time.

Entirely unrelated tweets:

Big Blue is Killing Upstate New York http://t.co/P7HJrrVTBe via @aminterest

— Ed Driscoll (@EdDriscoll) April 15, 2015

Criticize her while you can MT @DouglasLevene HRC says she’d back const amdt to cut back 1st Am prot for polit speech http://t.co/4Dk73LV0yt

— Walter Olson (@walterolson) April 14, 2015