This article will no doubt generate some disagreements, simply because people don’t share all the same exact values. In short, I do not share a belief in a god of any sort. Thus, I’ll refrain from discussing that religion-related hot button issues here, namely abortion and gay rights.

That said, I believe there are some areas conservatives can agree on, among them smaller government, lower taxes, and more personal freedoms. I’ll cover the last item tomorrow when I discuss freedom of religion and speech. However, I will note that this is one area where the status quo is on very shaky grounds.

Moving on to small government, this is an area that is very much intertwined with the following concepts of lower taxes and personal freedoms. Yet, it is possible to discuss the size of government as its own concept.

I think the best way to explain how we’ve moved so far away from small government by showing your the following clip from comedian Stephen Colbert. Though he is not known for his particularly conservative views, this segment gets the point across nicely that our government is so big and unwieldy, that government agencies are practically tripping over each other doing the same work.

How did this happen? Our politicians are a key perpetrator here, passing policies that have time and again expanded the size of government. However, and unfortunately this is an inconvenient truth, WE have allowed it to happen. By voting in the same folks term after term, and not demanding thast they reduce the size of government, we have passively sat by it’s become such a behemoth..

Of course, as our politicians grow government, more taxation is needed to support it. As time has gone on, we have gotten saddled with more taxes. Recently, the magicalarbitrary number of $250,000 has been selected by the government, and particularly the President, as the level at which most personal taxes will be increased.

I’ll be repeating nothing new here, but what incentive do people have to increase their personal wealth if the consequence will be increased taxes and fees? They don’t. I guess you could even go as far to say that it’s a deliberate attempt by the government to disincentive people from doing just that, in order to make income “equal.”  I believe the popular term for end goal of this strategy is socialism.

I believe an overburden of taxation is impacting another, related American value: ingenuity and innovation. The biggest incentive for coming up with new ideas is making a profit off them. But if you’re overtaxed as a business, there is little incentive to innovate in the first place.

It’s things like loss of ingenuity that (besides the tax burden itself) that is affecting the competitiveness of the United States among the world. It is things like lack of innovation that has allowed China to become the new #2 economy. You know, we’re still one of the most innovative countries, but if we don’t fix things up, they’ll fast overtake us.

Again, we the people have allowed this to happen. We keep sending the same, big-government folks (from both parties) back to Capitol Hill, so they keep doing the same old things year after year. I think it’s time to send them a message, don’t you?

Michael Merritt is in Washington, D.C. this week for Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally on Aug. 28, featuring Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, Alveda King, and other speakers. Throughout the week he is discussing areas that he feels have brought dishonor to the U.S. Then, on Saturday, he will be covering the rally live from the Lincoln Memorial. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeWMerritt during the rally, and then here on RATA for a wrap-up article.