American Anti-Statism on the Left and Right

So I recognized something fascinating today. I sometimes try to explain to progressives that the barriers to some of the policies they favor, like single payer, are not just or mainly corporate contributions but, first, the structural features of our government that make it extremely difficult to enact legislation and, second, the anti-statist views of Americans that lead them to distrust large expansions of government power. And they always say I’m wrong, especially about the anti-statist views of Americans. But let the US government do something of which they disapprove, e.g., collecting the meta-data from phone conversations, or make a botch of something, e.g., the ACA website, and you find these same progressives expressing views that echo the borderline paranoid anti-government, anti-statist arguments of the right. Now they are the ones who are suspicious of or impatient with the “damn government.” My point is not just that the left is wrong to be suspicious or impatient, although in the two cases I mentioned I think progressives go way too far. My point is that my argument about the centrality of fear and distrust of the state in our political culture is absolutely correct. And the proof that I’m right is that this theme in American political thought is found as much on the left as on the right.