As I sit on the sidelines watching the Republican party engage in a circular firing squad, and possibly missing the most important,  and what should be the easiest, opportunity to reverse our course,  I found myself reading Michael Tanner's Leviathan on the Right:  How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution. (2007)  Tanner, a senior fellow at the  Cato Institute,  illuminated the history of the rise of the big government conservative. Neoconservatives,  which have roots as dissatisfied liberals,  were used to government solutions. While we often associate this movement with expansive and aggressive foreign policy,  their influence is also deeply felt in domestic issues.  While they favor free market solutions,  they are less concerned with the economic results than the cultural issue, and feel that government should drive cultural positions.  The religious right takes this further by again...(Read Full Post)