It has been 40 years since President Ronald Reagan declared in his first inaugural address that “government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.”

The infrastructure plan that President Biden described on Wednesday — $2 trillion in federal investment in poured concrete, electric car chargers, artificial intelligence and social engineering — is a bet that government can do colossal things that the private sector cannot.

The coronavirus crisis has led to the unexpected return of the visible hand of government after decades of small government consensus throughout the West. The pandemic has demonstrated how the erosion of public services has made capitalist societies vulnerable to disruption, less internationally competitive, and ultimately less resilient.

Conservatives are getting a little fed up with Big Business. Tech overlords are at the top of the you-know-what list — especially after they worked together to kick our deranged president off the major social-media sites and sideline the fringe alternative Parler. For the past several years, major corporations have made a big show of supporting woke causes in one insufferable commercial after another, while subjecting their employees to tedious, insulting, and ineffective bias training.

The middle of a pandemic is not the easiest time to argue for limited government. As The Atlantic put it a few days ago, “There are no libertarians in a pandemic.” Indeed, this is precisely the time when we want government to do certain things, and many of those things involve a vigorous and active government (not to mention a competent one). I’m quite comfortable with the government providing testing and requiring or at least facilitating social distancing, to cite just a couple of examples.

Supporters of political newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) were unable to surmise how all of the monetary freedoms she is promising will be paid for.

We’ve invested in Washington ever-greater powers while raising even higher our expectations for what it can do.

Though the answer is vitally important to our freedom and our way of life, this isn’t a question most Americans would ever consider.

So what’s more important?Perhaps your first reaction is that democracy should always prevail. But should majority opinion always be what drives our laws?

In fact, we must understand that democracy without limits can lead to oppression. Our failure to maintain strict

Things are spinning out of control. Out of control, at least, by government, and by the United States government in particular.
You don’t have to spend much time reading the news — or monitoring your Twitter feed — to get that impression. Armed fighting in Ukraine. Islamic State beheadings in Iraq and Syria. Hundre