The Tea Party at ground level - I live in a rural , Upstate New York town. Around here,

[gratuitous]

1. There is a saying about critics

"He knows the cost of everything, and the value of nothing." I'd lump Libertarians and many of these "small government" nincompoops in with that category. They can tell you to the penny what every little thing costs, but they have no concept of the value the community derives from it (say, a school when they don't have kids of their own, or an expansion of the sewer system when their area is working just fine right now). Their mindset seems to be that the system just sort of happens, and that without government "interference," it would keep working or work even better. We all saw how well that worked when the regulatory watchdogs were shut out of monitoring CDOs.