did you forget the /sarc?? Seriously, when you compare today to say around 1830, the size and scope of government today is much, much larger. At all levels government seeks to control ALL aspects of our lives.
If you venture back in time in our Republic you would never see such busy body intrusiveness you see today. To believe otherwise is to deny the reality we see today, or the reality that existed in the past.
If you consider what life was like in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, you must realize how powerful was that government relative to the details of your life. The rules were not, as they are today, impersonal and bureaucratic, but they were strict, During the early republic, government was largely state and local, but the citizen was subject to it. The Central government was in deed, a distant power. It is IT which has grown exponentially. for the past century. State and local power have also grown to a degree that out forefathers would not have imagined, but they was something they were used to.