Big and bigger

I don't know if the writer here is being deliberately dense, but the editorial sure seems to labor mightily to ignore a whole category of small-government arguments:

Indiana political columnist Brian Howey's Sunday column on the tea party's silence on some key issues reminded us of the negative reaction of some local tea party leaders to the proposal for a consolidated Evansville and Vanderburgh County government. Indeed, if they want smaller local government, here is their opportunity.

Howey, whose column appears on our Viewpoint page, observed Sunday that there seem to be disconnects between the tea party and some issues that would seem ready-made for their movement.

He pointed out that some of the statewide groups have made statements about less government and less taxes, but that they have remained silent on some issues, among them the proposed Kernan-Shepard local government reforms that call for smaller government.

Kernan-Shepard called for the elimination of township government in Indiana. As a result, township assessors have been all but eliminated, but township trustees remain in control of township poor relief, despite proposals that their offices be done away with. Howey wrote that in looking at more than two dozen tea party websites, he did not see a single reference to any of the Kernan-Shepard reforms.

In the first place, it's presumptuos, arrogant and condescending to tell a group what it should think or endorse. Its members can do that very well. Republicans in the General Assembly, for example, are in the "kid in the candy store" frame of mind right now (just like the Democrats in Washington were until the midterm), so they're working on their whole wish list of social-conservative causes -- abortion, same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, etc. etc. That has many liberals bringing out that tired old "Hey, don't you want to get the government out of things?" straw man. Actually, conservatives never say they want no government, they just say there is now too much government; they just tend to want to use government for different things than liberals do.  Exaggerating the claim just to knock it down can be turned on liberals, too: Hey, you want government control of everything; how come your against it here?

And speaking of too much government: Not everybody agrees that eliminating townships or merging city and county operations amounts to "smaller" or "less" government. That's so only if the only criterion is number of government employees, but it's not, as much as this editorial would like to pretend it is. Eliminating townships would move their functions to the higher, county level, one step further away from the people. Merging city and county would likely create a bigger bureaucracy and, again, remove a level of government close to the people. In each case, proponents tout efficiency. But opponents treasure accountability and responsiveness. Fewer levels of government, to many people, means fewer choices, less flexibility, not as much freedom.