The government will always continue to spend more, if for no reason that it has more citizens every year to spend it on. I am uncomfortable with the increase of growth in spending, and I wish we hadn't added increased benefits to medicare and passed a preposterous farm subsidy bill. Bush's new budget proposal looks far better, especially in regard to the latter.
The DOE budget is also troubling, in two regards. It's a lot more money, and if money solved the problem, California would have the best test scores in the nation. In fact, they're pathetic.
The only place I find security oppressive is at our airports. It's absurd. I don't notice it anywhere else.
I think the nation is becoming more conservative, yet I think the measures we're taking during the Islamic Jihad for our protection are making a lot of conservatives nervous.
You and I will disagree about our borders. I understand. I doubt we could stop everyone, but 25,000 is far better than 1-3 million. What is taking place now isn't right.
I pretty much agree with the rest of your comments, with one caviot.
Government never releases power. It continues to accumulate power. This is like a group tug-o-war, where one side has a place to tie off, the other having to expend energy every moment.
When the other side gets tired, the group with the tie off takes another big tug, and ties off again. They other side wears themselves out, and the process repeats until the side with the tie off wins.
The government is setting up the foundations for some massive problems later on. I do not like what I see with regard to a national ID or networked state IDs.
Everyone can sign on to this if they like. I do believe this is the one key to pulling together a number of related problems regarding abuse of power. I'm not going to convince anyone, but that's my take on it. And that's why I say some of the things I do about conservatism and what's down the road.