Big Government: Do We Have Ourselves to Blame?

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." - John Adams (Journal, 1772)

John Adams seemed to understand implicitly, and with very good reason, that a truly representative government must necessarily derive directly from the people governed and could not successfully exist without their full, knowing, and intelligent consent and active participation.

I think Adams was also making another critical point; that it is public liberty that must always remain the priority consideration in creating and maintaining our various government forms, systems, and processes. Government's proper role is to secure and defend those liberties for everyone, and not to undermine, degrade, or infringe upon them.

Beliefs such as those of John Adams and his contemporaries were considered revolutionary in what was, at that time, an America that was still a collection of British colonies answerable to a monarchy. Strangely, beliefs such as these seem to have become nearly revolutionary once again.

A growing number of people in our community, city, state, and nation seem to have begun to believe that government's proper role is more that of a benevolent care-giver and a guarantor of generalized social outcomes, rather than the small and properly limited defender of personal freedoms and individual liberties it was intended to be.

On the national level, I think such a transition currently takes the form of an attempt at developing a mandatory nationalized healthcare system. (http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf)

On the local level, I think such a transition takes the form of a prohibition of Long Beach stores from providing legal products and services such as plastic carryout bags to their customers, fixing, in law what stores must charge for paper bags, and prohibiting stores from rebating or reimbursing those fees if the store desires to do so. (http://library.municode.com/HTML/16115/level3/VO1_TIT8HESA_CH8.62PLCABA.html#TOPTITLE)

In many other examples, great and small, we can see clear evidence of this transition of the understanding of the true purpose and proper role of government in our lives.

To my mind this begs some very important questions:

What is causing these disturbing trends and transitions in government's true purpose and proper role in our lives?

Is our government -at all levels- becoming larger, more intrusive, and more costly because a majority of the voters truly and actively desire this?

Or are these trends in government occuring due to a notable decrease of affirmative public participation and involvement? (as evidenced by decreasing voter turn out and other factors.)

What do you think?