Had I written or uttered such a phrase before November 8, 2016, most of you would have laughed your asses off and mirthfully mocked me. It is quite the oxymoron. Yet, in another example of how the election of Donald J. Trump has turned corners of the political world upside-down, I can safely report that there are now dyed-in-the-wool liberals out there making small-government noises.

Prior to that eventful day, and especially during the 8 year tenure of Barack Obama, liberals rarely saw a problem that could not be remedied by a healthy dose of government. Prior to that day, they cheerled Obama’s decision to do as much as he could via his “pen and phone” rather than by respecting the normal separation of powers. Prior to that day, they considered the Constitution an impediment to what needed to be done and saw in the General Welfare clause a carte blanche for all things regulatory and redistributive. Prior to that day, guns were anathema, and only military and law enforcement should have access to many categories of guns. Prior to that day, taxation was a Good Thing, people should be proud to pay their taxes, and every whim of big government that cost money was defended with “this is what taxes are for.” Prior to that day, originalist and limited-government Supreme Court justices were the enemy, improperly thwarting the good that President Obama and his Democratic Party sought to do, and improperly standing in the way of good-government behavioral mandates.

Now, some tell their brethren “don’t pay taxes if the president didn’t win the popular vote.” Now, Californians are talking secession. Now, liberals are talking like preppers, buying guns and nonperishable foods. Now, they’ve rediscovered the separation of powers and the notion that Congress isn’t supposed to rubber-stamp the President’s every wish. Now, they’ve learned the words “states’ rights.” Now, they’ve finally found some usefulness for that ‘ancient dusty relic written by white male slaveowners,’ aka the Constitution.

When the Republicans under George W. Bush held the reins of power, they expanded government and spent like drunken sailors. They embraced the farcically-named “compassionate conservatism,” a mishmash of family-values and statism-lite policies. They thought that, by appealing to the social conservatives and to the “gimme” crowd, they could establish a new type of majority and stay in power. They, of course, didn’t realize that the “gimme” crowd could not be held with a lower level of “gimme” than the Democrats promised, and that the other conservatives, i.e. the economic-focused folks, would not be happy. They lost Congress to the Dems in 2006, and lost the White House to Obama in 2008.

Obama railed against Bush’s expansion of executive power in his brief stint as a Senator. Of course, in hindsight, it’s easy to conclude that he did so not out of principle, but because his party controlled Congress and Bush’s executive actions diminished Congress’s power. Obama wasted little time invoking his own form of executive power expansion, i.e. the “pen and phone,” once his party lost control of Congress.

Obama’s swing from “principled Constitutionalist” to expansive autocrat is a microcosm of the nature of partisan politics and a mirror of the sudden appearance of small-government liberals. When one has the reins of power, and one is untethered to the bedrock principle of limited government, one sees that principle as an obstacle to doing stuff. It’s only when one’s opponents have taken the reins that such a person looks for the brake lever. The assertion of “principle” is, of course, supposed to add moral weight to one’s argument, but a person that invokes “principle” only when it benefits his agenda is simply being dishonest.

Thus, we should distrust those liberals who have suddenly “come to Jesus” with regard to small government that we know their history and don’t believe for a moment that they’ve actually embraced the Constitution. However, we should also both nurture and exploit their skin-deep professing of “small government is beautiful.” Rather than calling them hypocrites, we should use them to help undo the statist expansion of recent years and decades, to check those aspects of Trump’s agenda that expand government power, size and scope, and to reinforce liberty and individual rights. Perhaps, as the fruits of such efforts come forth, we might even gain some converts to the cause of liberty.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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