Those simple graphs don't come close to illuminating the simple truth that Frank points out: The world has changed since 1950...heck, it's changed beyond recognition since 1776.

Limbaugh's full of hot air (what else is new?) when he claims that because the Constitution doesn't direct the government to do certain things, it's illegitimate for it to do those things. The Founders weren't just wise, they possessed a modicum of humility. They knew that they didn't possess clairvoyance and that they couldn't foresee what the future would bring. So they left the Constitution open-ended and made provisions for change. The very essence of the Constitution is that it charges the Federal government with promoting the general welfare at the direction of the people.

The fact that the government now does more than it did two centuries ago is, on balance I think, evidence that the system's working. The Founders couldn't have anticipated the Industrial Revolution and the complete reorganization of society to support an industrial economy, nor the side-effects like dislocation caused by cycles of unemployment and changes in concentration of population to provide factory workers. Nor could they have anticipated later effects like the rise and fall of various industries, with attendant large-scale disruption of employment patterns. Urbanization is a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, and it would have been an alien concept to the agrarian Founders. It brought the need to provide urban infrastructure, both physical and social. But they arranged the system in such a way that we now have the things that we need to cope with changing circumstances.

My recollection of conservative complaints goes back only about 40 years, but I suspect that the phenomenon's much older than that. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that around 1800 the American Tories were bitching and moaning that taxes are too high, the guvmint's out of control, them damn Whigs are poisoning the moral fiber of our new nation, and on and on. Some things are eternal.