Huge Majority Of Americans Believe 'Big Government' Is The Greatest Threat To The US

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/big-government-poll-2013-12



Seventy-two percent of Americans believe that big government is the largest threat facing the country, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

Survey respondents also said that big government was a bigger threat than big business and big labor. Twenty-one percent said big business is the greatest threat, while only 5 percent said big labor is.

Americans have always viewed big government as the biggest threat, but this is a record high for the survey. The fear of big government has risen dramatically since 2009, when 55 percent believed it was the greatest threat to the country's future, according to Gallup.

Gallup attributed the rise in concern to Republicans, who historically view big government as a bigger threat than Democrats. Ninety-two percent of Republicans said that big government is the greatest threat to the country.



Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/poll?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29#ixzz2nvSnR6uA

[JoePhilly]

1. Hummm .... what happended in 2009?

[JustAnotherGen]

4. +1000

And truthfully - I fear a big government - if it is going to be filled with right wing Christian wingnuts who seek to monitor my vagina, bedroom, uterus, and doctor's office - as well as try to teach children that dinosaurs walked with man. Heaven help us if the 'since 2009' (let's call it as it is - Folks Who Don't Like Black Folks in the White House) crowd ever gets into power. We'll be living a cross between The Klansman and The Handmaid's Tale - mark my words. They aren't stupid - they are evil and wish to oppress everyone who is not exactly like them.

[FatBuddy]

2. majority of Uhhhhmericans are irredeemably stupid

[RKP5637]

5. Yep, many Americans aren't the sharpest tools in the tool shed, and fall victim

to all the BS flying around and propaganda, and vote in their own worst interests. Often, I'm surprised America has gone as far as it has. I think without the post WWII era and the jump-start effect, America would be scrambling with fierce competition across the world. We got a head start, and now we're working hard to lose it, way too many uninformed and gullible people ...

[FatBuddy]

6. it's a mini dark ages

even 40 years ago, it seems like people had more snap.

[pipoman]

11. Yeah. .

They just don't get that the Democratic party abandoning labor and 'fast tracking' massive job exportation it is in their best interest. .morons. .

[FatBuddy]

12. yes,

they really don't get that.

and the other side and what they are doing too.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. When Hamilton and Adams were arguing with Jefferson...

their point was simply that the biggest problem with democracy is that the people just don't know shit.

That's why the Senate was originally elected by an electoral college and has greater powers than the House and there's a Presidential veto power.

[RKP5637]

7. And that IMO still holds true today. I'm always amazed at how little many know about how

the government works. I'm astounded by the ignorance, and even more astounded by those that sit on their ass, complain, and don't even bother to vote because it's just too inconvenient and hard to vote. Like WTF ... mental midgets willfully ignorant.

[pampango]

16. I wonder sometimes if the whole experiment with 'democracy' (not just here, but everywhere) isn't

doomed, precisely because "the people just don't know shit." It seems possible that in the not-to-distant future there could be a return to humans' every history of rule by kings/queens, emperors, etc.

Citizens need to be educated and powerful to avoid this, but there seems to be some kind of inherent lethargy that makes people not care about this. They are prone to accept being powerless and whatever fate awaits them. Not everyone, of course, but too many.

I know that is not a very liberal thought but it's hard not to think it sometimes.

[pipoman]

8. without 'big government'

Enabling big business, big business isn't a threat. .When the Democratic party was the traditional party of the people, and the Republican party was the party of big business, big government was ok..now the Democratic party bows to the same master as the Republicans big government is the larger threat..

This is the common thread between the disenfranchised on both sides of the isle..the common thread between the rank and file tea baggers and the occupiers. When these two disenfranchised groups put their differences aside, they have a lot in common. .and are a force to be reckoned with. .

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. 92% of republicans and 40-some % of Democrats are simply sheeple that will

believe, do, or say whatever they are told to by what they perceive as authority.

[JaneyVee]

10. You know what's even more threatening? No government.

[pipoman]

13. No threat of that any time soon. .

It is unified government with both parties having the same puppet masters. .

[madrchsod]

14. big business has done well in deflecting

they have manipulated the american people into thinking big government is the enemy. what the american people fail to realize is they elect the people of represent them every two years. if they do not like the direction of the country or thier representative they can vote them out.

[get the red out]

15. They don't even know what "big government" is

Memorize and regurgitate; that's what a lot of people do, they watch Fox News and hang on to key terms like "big government" without having a clue what they are actually talking about.

[marmar]

17. Years of propaganda and a deteriorating education system have rendered many Americans.....

...... incapable of independent thought. Sad.

[Coyotl]

18. Let's refine this one: The biggest threat to the US economic security is the US military budget.

NOT big government, big waste and big fraud yes. But government is our friend and essential.

[alc]

19. the "expanding" not the "big" is the real problem

A "big" government can control "the other guy". D's are happy if the government is "big" enough to control businesses, R's are happy if the government is "big" enough to control unions.

The problem with "expanding" governments is that they will eventually control everything. It's the nature of people in power to want more power. Maybe not "the current president" (at any time) but over time there will be presidents and congresses and agencies (i.e. NSA) who think they need more power and expand power. Without tight limits that stop the government from permanent expansion -even in 'emergencies' - any government will expand too far over time.

I think that the patriot act, and insurance mandates, and NSA spying, and many other things over the last decade have gotten people on both sides to notice that there are no limits on expansion (neither party cares about the Constitutional limits -only on ways to "get around" those limits). It's not just that the government is "too big" now but that we don't know where the growth ends (because we are realizing that it doesn't end)

[markpkessinger]

20. I think there is both a legitimate and an illegitimate concern over "Big Government" . . .

. . . and what Republicans have done -- very skillfully, I might add -- is to conflate the legitimate with the illegitimate in the popular mind. Let me elaborate.

When we are talking about the burgeoing security/surveillance state, which has become so massive that it poses a direct threat to civil liberties, that is a kind of "big government" that merits real concern. Or when we talk about a nationwide epidemic of hyper-aggressive policing, or a corrupt judicial system in which people receive very different treatment and outcomes based on factors such as race or class, or about a school-to-prison pipeline, or when we see the effective criminalization of poverty, those, too, can be seen as areas meriting legitimate concern over big, over-weening government. Likewise, when both parties are seen as being in the pocket of corporate interests over against the interest of average, working Americans, that, too, raises a legitimate "big government" concern. And God knows, if our obscenely overblown war machine isn't an example of "big government" that warrants serious concern, what is?

What Republicans have managed to do over the years, however, is to conflate legitimate fears of all of the things mentioned above (even as they work to strengthen them behind the scenes), with the notion that any kind of activity service the government performs for the benefit of citizens -- e.g., administering Social Security, Medicare, providing much needed regulation of the health insurance industry (in the form of the ACA, even as they don't go nearly far enough in doing so), environmental regulation, workplace safety regulation and oversight, strict regulation of the financial sector, etc. -- is a manifestation of the kind of "big government' people need to fear.

And when Democrats are seen to be the defenders of any or all of those areas that occasion legitimate concern over "big government" -- even though the GOP is even more heavily invested in maintaining them than the Democratic Party is -- it adds fuel to the GOP propaganda war against "big government" generally, and to the notion that Democrats are the advocates of such "big government." And that is why groups like the Third Way wind up, in the long run, playing right into the GOP's hands.

If Democrats were to seize a populist agenda, they could also reframe the narrative of concern over "big government," redirecting it towards those areas about which voters genuinely should be concerned. Otherwise, we will find ourselves continually undermined by the corporatists in our own party.

[sinkingfeeling]

21. Can we get any more blind? Bigger threat than big buisness? Yeah, it's

just awful until you live in Oklahoma and that awful government gives you money for a storm shelter or you're in Arkansas and you want FEMA to pay for cleaning up an ice storm. This whole libertarian thing is destroying our once working democracy.

[CJCRANE]

22. That's why I think Murdoch released the 9/11 info

in the NY Post...

that is, to rile up the Tea Party (Republican base / religious nuts) and to confirm what they already believed.

This gives Tea Party candidates a boost in 2014 to overthrow the establishment GOP incumbents or help keep them in line and make them do whatever Murdoch dictates.

[hootinholler]

23. Big Government is nonsense

WTF does that even mean? Whatever you want it to mean. It's a fucking conservative dog whistle phrase that sows confusion amongst the ill informed who think it actually means something.

Big government is bad until you take away the part that helps me or gramma.

[FarCenter]

24. Governments, corporations, and unions are organizations. All organizations rot over time.

Designing an organization that maintains, renews and evolves itself without eventually degenerating is an unsolved problem.