Joseph Singer on American Ambivalence About Government

A nice quote from Harvard law professor Joseph Singer, from the Cornell Law Review of all places:

Americans reflexively oppose “big government” but support the myriad regulations and social programs that government enacts.  They do not want regulations, but they do want laws that protect them from unsafe products and workplaces; laws that protect them from polluted air and water; and laws that regulate land use to prevent factories from being located in the middle of residential subdivisions.  They do not want government to interfere with the free market but they do want government to protect ‘hard working Americans’ from losing their homes.  They are skeptical of big government but just as skeptical of big business.  They like the idea of small government but not the practice:  when hard times strike, they demand government action.  This suggests that the American people embrace both sides of the libertarian / progressive split.  It turns out that we are deeply ambivalent about the relationship between law and economics.  It also means that we we have a similar ambivalence about property rights.