[skhunted]

Almost no one really wants government to leave them alone. Everyone looks to government after a disaster. People rely on government for policing and most people for providing their children education. People rely on government to ensure the food supply is safe. These things are largely forgotten about by the people saying they want less government. There are contradictory views held by the people who say they want government to leave them alone. They have bought into a fantasy narrative that they are under attack by government and liberalism.

[tim333]

A lot of people would like quite limited government that does the basics but otherwise leaves them alone.

[skhunted]

Can you give some examples of this “leave me alone” that they want to see enacted?

[tim333]

A sort of example might be Hong Kong when I was there thirty or so years ago under British colonial control. The tax rate was about 15% and the government was active in some areas like maintaining the roads, building housing and basic education and health care but otherwise left things mostly to the market. It did pretty well up until the takeover by China which wasn't due to any desire by the population to have China control things, but due to China wanting to take over and having a large military.

[skhunted]

The voters in the U.S. who want government to leave them alone say they want this also want government to regulate aspects of healthcare they don’t like. They want government to regulate private businesses so that they can’t exclude their notion of what “free speech” means. They want government to crack down on all the people and things they disagree with.

[pavlov]

Trumpism has proven that most American conservatives don't want that.

Republicans used to have a strong faction of fiscal hawks who advocated eliminating all the expensive non-military government spending: privatizing Medicare, cutting Social Security, etc. But Trump discovered that you can simply promise to eliminate the deficit while also promising to leave all those programs in place exactly as they are, and people will eat it up.

That left politicians like Paul Ryan in a weird place because they were pushing for a limited government that their constituents didn't want anymore.