In an article I read this morning (but can no longer track down), one of the people interviewed spoke of “eliminating spending”. Not cutting spending or reducing spending, but eliminating spending. As in all. It occurred to me that this is the most obtuse, and natural, of directions for the debate to go, because it is based on a simple idea: if the government doesn’t spend any money at all, then it won’t need any money at all. No greater utopia could exist for libertarians…until they realize that little separates their philosophy from anarchism.

There are plenty of reasonable suggestions for why one would want to reduce expenditures in a budget. But this word choice leads one to believe that they want no expenditures at all. And with no expenditures, there is no need for income. This is precisely the language of Grover Norquist, whose linguistic complexity leaves no room for the survival of any amount of government.

As I’ve said before, we are far too eager to explain our economic conditions with the inapt family budget analogy, but this one is far too simplistic to need anything else. What this type of conservative wants is for the government to be a freeloafer. They don’t want the government to have a job, no purpose, and no honesty. They want the government to be a mooch that steals from its unsuspecting friends and pandering to its family.

They don’t want the government to go to work and earn its way. They don’t want the government to prove it has our best interest at heart and earn promotions. They don’t want the government to live up to the American Dream. They don’t want to want the government whatsoever. They want a government that is lazy, ineffective, and drunk, because who do conservatives hate more than people of color, women, LGBT, and the disabled?

Freeloafers.