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Why do both "major" parties only care about the issues on which they advocate more government?

The Democrats have almost always (with the exception of George McGovern and a few other possible exceptions) cared only about their economic platform of central planning by government bureaucrats. Whenever the Democrats are in power, they're always willing to vote to continue to fund wars (and start new wars) even though they pretend to be the party of peace. Whenever the Democrats are in power, they always tend to pass new restrictions on personal liberty, such as reinstating draft registration during the Carter administration and reducing the already small amount of freedom that younger Americans have during the Clinton administration. However, Republicans have normally limited their attacks on the Democrat policies to the areas where they pretend to be for less government instead of their extremist economic policies (although, with John McCain practically a lock to lose this election, the Republicans have done a great job in the last week or so going after Obama's crazy economic ideas). The Republican Party, in sharp contrast to the Democrats, only cares about its program of perpetual war and reducing personal freedom. Although they pretend to believe in limited government and the free market, there is no principle of economic freedom that they are unwilling to sell out, a prime example being when the Republicans passed Medicare Part D a few years ago, which moved this country closer to socialized medicine. 2 more examples of the Republicans selling out the free market are Sarbanes-Oxley (the infamous law that has caused businesses to leave the country to move to places like China that require less bureaucratic paperwork to operate a business) and the infamous bailout (although, to their credit, the Republican politicians were more likely to oppose this than their Democrat counterparts). However, the Democrats somehow think that the Republicans are "limited government ideologues" who irresponsibly "deregulated" the economy. How can both of these parties get the other one so utterly wrong? What exactly are Americans who still believe in the principles of liberty that made this country great supposed to do when both parties show nothing but contempt for those principles?

Public Comments

1. There just isn't enough room here to fully answer that question (and there almost wasn't enough room to ask it!) The original difference between the two major parties was whether they were strict constructionists or loose constructionists. That has all gotten lost over the years. America as a whole has become and is becoming more and more socialist. We look at the communist leaders of other countries and see them as hopeless idealists and misled while we look at ourselves as far superior to anyone else. So many Americans are socialists and don't even know it and the job of president is getting harder and harder. The president has to act on "what's right" while at the same time not upsetting the "closet communists". Socialism, essentially, is the idea that everyone should have the same things no matter what. A socialist would say that it isn't right for Bill Gates to be a multi-billionaire while so many go hungry. A capitalist would say if you don't like Microsoft, go create your own operating system to compete with Windows. This is a careful balance a president must maintain, and one which hasn't been done very successfully.