> I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
Grover Norquist said the quiet part out loud in 2001, but conservatives have been running that playbook since the New Deal.
I think one of America's many failures is allowing a radically revolutionary right-wing (that is currently headed full speed to fascism) to keep calling themselves "conservatives" when that label is about as incorrect as can be. They don't "conserve" anything. They're not actually reactionary, although they often pretend to be. They are not trying to be defenders of Chesterton's Gate[1]. They're radicals, who want to reshape society to their own whims and prejudices. And they ought to be address and treated as such.
The main reason is probably that US never had the major socialist movements of 20th century Europe. Before those liberals were the left in Europe too.