It is of course overstating the argument against government to claim that the government will send out someone to check whether you planted a tree. I haven’t see such a plan proposed. I’ve seen occasional mention of GPS ideas for taxing energy use, but both liberals and conservatives have rejected the idea.

You are making two major mistakes with regards to your use of labels. First you are going by conservative rhetoric as opposed to what they actually do. Secondly you are assuming that there is one definition for conservative or liberal–there are a wide variety of view under both labels.

Conservatives talk of smaller government but the reality is that the major growth in government in recent years has come under conservatives. They just ignore things they support as being big government.

While conservatives talk more of smaller government, liberals are more concerned with limited government–that is limiting the power of the government over the individual.

Conservatives might care more about how many people are employed by government or how many rules there are listed in the Federal Register. Liberals care more about limiting the power of government to restrict the freedom of individuals, but tend to care less about the more physical size of government.

Liberals also differentiate between desired government and undesired government actions. Therefore liberals do not have the qualms that conservatives do about people who want government services to have them available, but are concerned when government policies infringe upon individual liberties.

Of course there are a wide variety of people labeled liberal (as well as conservative). I’ve often criticized some strands of liberalism which promote big government programs without sufficient respect for liberty as much as I’ve criticized conservatives. There are also conservatives (although not the ones who dominate the Republican Party) who come closer to my beliefs than some liberals. A major problem with labels is that they can lump together people with quite different views creating artificial separations between people whose views are much closer.

Conservatives, such as the talk radio people you listen to, use propaganda and misinformation to spread their views. They misrepresent the difference between conservatives and liberals as being over the size of government. Another propaganda tool of the right is to use scare stories of “national health care.” With the exception of Michael Moore and a very small number of people, very few people in this country support national health care.