People seem to be pretty fond of the government taking action these days. This is an interesting dichotomy considering we Americans started fiercely opposed to government action in our lives, and it showed in our first 120 years or so.

The dreadful taxation that pushed our Founding Fathers to revolt against the Empire was equivalent to a tax of 1 percent of income, upwards of 2.5 percent in plantation colonies. Now we work four full months, or more, just to pay our taxes. In fact, Americans pay more in taxes than they do for food, clothing and shelter combined.

Our first Constitution, The Articles of Confederation, was so extremely anti-government that our nation was barely an alliance of 13 independent nations or, as they preferred to call them in the classical Greek sense, states. Our nation’s Founding Fathers were so paranoid of big government that there was no president or federal court system. Congress had no power to tax or regulate trade amongst the states, and each state could print its own money.

In this regard, the authorship of our present Constitution was less one of Divine inspiration, as some are wont to believe, and more an evolution of the conglomeration of political concepts that gave birth to our nation. Nevertheless, the Founding Fathers placed strict guidelines on what the federal government could do in hopes that they could give it just enough power to make things efficient without giving it too much power. This is why the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

This was the state of affairs in the United States until the 1930s. We were a people who took great pride in our self-reliance, independence and ingenuity, and we preferred that the government keep its distance from our personal lives and private fortunes.

During this time, a nation was built that went from upstart colony to world power in less than a century, without an income tax; selective service; a Federal Reserve; corporate welfare; Social Security; Medicare; an FBI; a CIA; a Department of Labor, energy, education, homeland security; seatbelt laws; drug laws; or even a very large military.

These days, however, a different mindset has taken hold of Americans. Today, many Americans think government is in place to solve our problems, provided we put in place the appropriate representatives to do our will. Usually, though, these efforts are not as altruistic as they appear and are manifestations of powerful lobbies that work around the clock to make government bigger in an effort to advance their own social agendas and amass their fortunes at the expense of the taxpayer. It is for these reasons that we find ourselves in bitter struggles not imagined by our nation’s Founding Fathers, with government breaking down under the weight of massive entitlement programs.

We will soon be the heirs of massive debts incurred by a spend-thrift Republican Congress. We need to start asking ourselves if we really need things like a rainforest in Iowa or billions in corporate welfare.

This is the way it is, but it is not the way it has always been or how it has to be. Government can be smaller and more efficient, and we can be better off as a result. We can privatize Social Security, eliminate income tax and end subsidies to successful businesses. These are all great ideas, but Republicans seem more concerned about Iraqi freedom than they do our own.

This is the Republicans’ chance to shine. They have an opportunity to reign in our overly expansive government and be the heroes of our republic. If the last four years are any indication, however, they are going to sell out our futures and reward their pet interests in an effort to secure enough votes to stay in power, regardless of whether it’s good for us. Such is the Neo-Conservative agenda.