Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown

"Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub." These were the words of Grover Norquist, spoken not as a whisper but as a challenge to an age grown heavy with bureaucracy. His statement, sharp and unyielding, was born from the conviction that the state—once a humble servant—had become a master too powerful, too vast, too detached from the people it claimed to serve. To shrink government, as Norquist declared, was not to destroy order, but to reclaim freedom—to return to a time when the will of the people reigned supreme, unchained by the weight of excessive rule.

In the tone of the ancients, his cry echoes like that of those who once stood against kings and empires swollen with pride. For every age has known the danger of power unrestrained. The Leviathan, once awakened, consumes all: the spirit of enterprise, the dignity of labor, the liberty of conscience. When government grows too vast, it becomes a beast of appetite—feeding not the people, but itself. Thus Norquist’s image of “drowning it in a bathtub” is not of cruelty, but of restoration—a symbolic act of returning power to where it was always meant to dwell: in the hands of free men and women.

In the ancient republics of old, Cato the Younger warned against the same creeping tide. He stood in the Roman Senate, decrying the rise of state corruption and the erosion of virtue. He saw how the Republic, once lean and noble, had become bloated by excess—its officials bribed, its people pacified by spectacle and grain. Rome’s greatness was not stolen in a single night; it was surrendered, inch by inch, to a government too large to fail and too proud to be questioned. And so, what Norquist spoke in modern words, Cato lived in ancient deeds—the eternal warning that liberty dies not in flame, but in comfort.

To shrink government, then, is to rekindle the ancient ideal of self-reliance and responsibility. It is to remember that the strength of a people does not spring from the decrees of rulers but from their own labor, courage, and virtue. When the people depend on the state for every need, they forget their own power. When they trade freedom for security, they receive neither. The bathtub in Norquist’s imagery is the vessel of renewal—the purging of excess, the cleansing of corruption, the return of balance between ruler and ruled.

Yet, wisdom demands that we temper zeal with discernment. For not all forms of governance are chains. A society without structure descends into chaos, as surely as one with too much control suffocates. The ancients taught the golden mean: that balance is the soul of stability. Thus, the goal is not to abolish government, but to purify it—to cut away what is corrupt and restore what is just. Government, at its best, should be like the sail of a ship: it must be strong enough to guide the vessel, yet light enough not to drag it beneath the waves.

History offers proof of this truth. In the early days of the American republic, the founders built a nation upon the principle of limited government. They had seen the tyranny of kings and sought to guard against its return. George Washington himself warned that government is like fire—a dangerous servant and a fearful master. If contained, it warms and sustains; if loosed, it consumes all in its path. And so Norquist’s modern flame burns in the same ancient hearth: a warning to keep the fire within its proper bounds.

The lesson is clear for all who would hear it: beware the creeping comfort of dependency. Do not surrender your will to the machine of the state. Take upon yourself the duties that freedom demands—work with integrity, give with compassion, and govern your own life with wisdom. The stronger the people become, the smaller the need for government’s hand. And when the heart of the citizen is mighty, no power can enslave it.

So let these words stand, not as a call to anarchy, but as a summons to renewal. The goal to shrink government is, at its core, the call to enlarge the human spirit. Let us never forget that the truest government is that which governs least because its people govern themselves best. When the soul of a nation stands upright, no empire can drown it—not in bathtubs, nor in oceans, nor in the tides of time itself.