On Jan. 20, 1981, when Ronald Reagan delivered his inaugural address to a nation battered by high inflation, punitive taxes and a stagnant economy, he said famously, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

“Yeah, right!” said all the sophisticated socialists in politics and media who assumed Reagan knew and cared as little as they did about limited government, free market capitalism and individual freedom.

Reagan's libertarian rhetoric was better than his actual governance or his ability to derail or even downsize the speeding train of Big Government. But his complaint about government is truer than ever.

Behind virtually every major social problem, financial crisis or corruption scandal that afflicts us lies the heavy hand or leaden foot of government, which today in all its levels gobbles up more than 50 percent of our annual GDP and controls more of our lives than ever.

The list of current government fiascoes and crises is long and bipartisan.

The Iraq War: Whether we “win” or lose, whether it was a bloody $3 trillion strategic blunder or a brave moral crusade, it could be brought to us only by Big Government and the politicians in charge of it.

The Energy Crisis: Our increased dependency on foreign oil and $4-a-gallon gasoline is a result of nearly 30 years of failed federal energy policy, which for political reasons has put us at the mercy of the thugs who run places like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Crisis: As expert Peter Wallison recently told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, you can put the blame squarely on Congress for not only failing to regulate Fannie and Freddie but also for encouraging them to make irresponsible investments in housing that have exacerbated the subprime mortgage mess.

The Dollar Crisis: No greedy Big Banks to blame. The only entity in America with the power to depreciate our money or wreck our economy is the federal government.

Ongoing federal fiascos – far too numerous to count in their entirety – include our failed, wasteful and/or hideously distortive agriculture, transportation, immigration and health-care policies; the homeland security mega-bureaucracy in infamous; the war on drugs is lost; our national forests are permanently mismanaged. Continued...