<...As long as government continues to decline as a percentage of GDP it completely invalidates your continuous (and ridiculous) claims that we are progressing toward totalitarian socialism. The size and scope of government verses the private sector is decreasing, not increasing.

On the contrary, I stand firmly by my claim. The fallacy you put forward is commonly fired at me. "Since the government does not "own" the means of production, how could we be possibly be socialist? Isn't that the definition?"

The amount of money spent in the private sector vs. the amount of money spent on government has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the amount of control the government exerts over its citizens and businesses--its "size and scope" as you put it.

The government exercises total control of huge aspects of society that it does not "own" or spend money directly on.

Just as one example of dozens, a favorite technique of government is "mandated spending," where the private sector is forced by law to perform some expensive action. Government control, yes. Government spending, no. Our regulatory structure is a big part of this.

OSHA for example has a trivial Federal budget ($426 million in 2001) compared to the billions it wrings out of the private sector at gunpoint for whatever loopy "fix" the bureaucrats think is needed at the workplace. I'm sure readers can come up with many other examples where the government gun is pointed, but government money is not actually spent.

Perhaps I should be using the term "fascism" instead of socialism to be technically correct, but totalitarianism is totalitarianism, no matter what label you try to stick on it.

The point I have been making is not that the government isn't as big as it "might" be. The point is that even from a solely financial standpoint, it is twice the size it was in 1974, although the needs of the nation have not changed significantly since then. I used the yardstick of the Federal Budget because it is a hard number that can be verified.

If there was some way to objectively quantifiy the loss of our freedoms and the increasing control of government over all our lives, I would use it. And I dare say the picture would look a lot worse.