THEY MEAN WHAT THEY SAY

Ned is constantly amused by some of his "liberal" friends' refusal to take extremist Republicans at their word, and denying they could mean what they clearly do mean. Take for example Grover Norquist. Norquist is nobody's fool, having been editor of Harvard Crimson, but somewhere along life's pathway somebody dropped him on his head. He has turned out to be the most fervent and even fanatical tax cutter and opponent to government of any educated person in the country. Witness his famous quotes: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." And "Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal. If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050"(h/t Wikipedia).
Now, Ned, has no intent to compare Norquist and his ilk to Hitler, since Norquist is apparently tolerant of religious beliefs.
But Ned is reminded of the British establishment in the 1930s, except for Churchill, who refused to believe Hitler was serious when he laid out all of his plans in Mein Kampf, for all the world to see.
Now, let Ned say he would support reducing the size of the federal government by 1/2 if that involved reducing the military by 1/2 and eliminating spending on nuclear weaponry. But Norquist and his followers do not support this, apparently.
So let Ned ask his skeptical conservative readers, in the words of Oliver Cromwell to Parliament, "Gentlemen I beseech ye, by the bowels of Christ, only think that ye might be mistaken."
In other words, only think WHY we have all the government agencies we have now: the FDA because food manufacturers were selling rotten food and pills that killed people; The Department of Labor because plutocrats were forcing children to work 14-hour days and industrialists were killing men and children in mines and factories; EPA because companies were spewing poisons into our air and water; an FAA for obvious reasons (Let everyone just fly wherever and whenever they want without instruments or flight plans. Try that one on for size.)
The Postal "Service" which Ned loves to genially hate, because nobody in his right mind would deliver a letter to Nome Alaska for the same price as one down the street; civil rights acts and agencies because those fun-lovin' rebs just had to go and lynch some black guy or kid from time to time just for being black. And that silly ol' Constitution, saying it was the job of the Federal Government to "promote the general welfare."
In sum, Ned encourages all of those persons emblazoned with a head to THINK about why we have the bureaucracies, unwieldy and expensive as they may be. BECAUSE the PRIVATE SECTOR WAS UNWILLING OR UNABLE TO STOP POISONING AND KILLING OUR FELLOW CITIZENS.