QFTD

In comments on Reason.tv's coverage of Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor event, M. said:

Jefferson and Washington would never [have] confused the public sphere with the machinery of government.

Pop quiz: which would our Founders have thought the smaller of the two entities?

'nother: how much smaller would it have been, say as a measure of how many persons were employed by, or paid by, one entity versus the other. Or say as a measure of how much spending is done by one versus the other.

I caught some of Beck's radio program last week, as he and his staff were discussing Brian Williams's appearance on Letterman. Letterman was asking Williams, as if asking Beck and the Tea Partiers through him: "taking our country back from whom?"

At the time I couldn't answer concisely, and in a way that wouldn't spawn countless challenges. Maybe the answer is concisely right there.