Republicans are the party of Big Government. Democrats are the party of Huge Government. Big Government–meaning government intervention in the economy, subsidizing of private business, and micromanaging regulation of business–fails every time it’s tried. When Big Government fails, this provides the Democrats’ rationalization for Huge Government. Republicans get away with calling themselves the party of small or limited government–meaning, a government that protects the rights of individuals to be free from physical force, and that’s about it. Republicans get away with this lie, so when their Big Government policies fail (witness Herbert Hoover, George W. Bush), the way is paved for Democrats to institute Huge Government (witness Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Obama). Democrats then “raise the bar,” if you will, for a more activist and expensive, expansive government than ever before seen. Republicans respond by simply calling for smaller Huge Government than the Democrats advocate–but a bigger government than even Democrats advocated a generation earlier. This is the cycle that has been playing out for at least a century in America. It must be reaching its climax, and fairly soon–probably in most of our lifetimes. How can it not? Government cannot grow much bigger than it already is. It controls the banking industry, the domestic auto industry and is about to take over medical care. Free speech will be the next (and last major) domain–until or unless Americans rise up and embrace a political and intellectual leadership that glorifies the rights of the individual, the practical necessity of freedom, and the requirement to roll back government as massively as it has expanded for the last century. In this generation, freedom will either die out in America altogether, or it will expand as not seen since the time of the first American Revolution. In part, it’s up to each one of us.