i don't give a fuck about the size of government. i don't think it should be bigger or smaller, i think it should be smarter. mark me down as a social liberal and a fiscal technocrat. they are, disproportionately. witness the prison population. what goes on with a woman's body is between her and her doctor, and no one else. anthropogenic climate change exists, and we should switch over to renewable, sustainable energy sources yesterday even if it did not exist. that way we can focus on the real elephant in the room, which is water. how do we produce enough crops to feed our ever growing population without water to grow those crops? it's a pretty malthusian problem that i hear almost no one talking about, ever. no, your strawboys do not a liberal make. but making strawboys like that all day long do feed into the title of this thread. i am my brother's keeper daily. i can't help it. i stop at red lights so i don't kill people, i tell someone if they tucked their shirt into their underwear, i share food with my neighbors all the time, offer them help when i see them doing something. what can i say? i think that the measure of society is how we treat our weakest and most vulnerable, and that no man is an island. the better we do as a whole, the better each of us do individually. "don't fuck with me and i won't fuck with you" is, i feel, not the best way to pass this most important of tests. you and i wouldn't be on the internet right now if not for collectivism. edit: you may disagree with me on the "no man is an island" thing, you may be more of the sartre type, i.e. "hell is other people". just remember, us humans are pack animals. i guarantee that if we got attacked tomorrow, we would put aside every single difference we had and bond together instantly to protect our country as a whole.