"I think the solution lies in education people up to the level that they can take care of themselves. Where they can resist the miracle diet pills, the get rich quick adds, the internet and phone fraud, the credit card traps and the appeals to buy the latest gizmo. Something most parents used to do but too few do today. I often tell my wife, a teacher, that schools should put personal finance, parenting and such things of a practical nature right in there with english, math, science etc."

I agree with that, Dickey, and with most of your other points, only I'm a bit dubious about your first paragraph.

My idea of what government should do is that it should do things that are simply too large (or expensive or unprofitable) for other people in society to manage, such as: set up an armed forces, a legislative system, a justice system, a legal system, a currency, and stuff like that. Then there's a taxation system.   I think government assistance is also needed in areas like education, communications systems, transit systems, medical systems, environmental systems, and so on...that doesn't mean I think that ALL those areas should be run totally and exclusively by the government. I don't. But I think that some government involvement is probably necessary.

Then you've got all the different levels of government: national, state, civic, local...all necessary to some extent.

Government is just the collective efforts of a society to manage itself in a coherent manner through people it appoints or elects to do that management and through people those people hire. That doesn't have to interfere with individual rights or individual efforts at getting ahead in life, as long as those efforts are not illegal.

I mean, heck, how could you run this society without the government? You couldn't. We're not living in log cabins in the wilderness anymore.

I don't really buy your definition of "conservative" and "liberal"...although I know it's the definition that runs through the average conservative's mind when he hears those terms, but I think it's mostly mythological.

I don't think most "liberals" want the government to have its hand in everything. Not by any means. It isn't that a liberal thinks government should do everything people won't do for themselves...it's that he thinks government must do those things that people simply can't do for themselves...and it's fairly obvious what those things are.

Why have governments always raised and maintained professional armies? Because the ordinary public can't manage it! They don't have the time or energy or motivation to manage it, because they're too busy dealing with ordinary day to day life, and they also can't afford the military hardware to do it properly, even if they wanted do, which they don't.