Reagan is the one that started defining the government as evil. He said "The scariest words you can hear is ‘in from the government and I’m here to help.’ " That defined the government as bad and evil. From then on anything the government did was bad by definition. He’s very much the start of this major problem of “drown the government in the bathtub” people. He launched the whole wave of them. You can’t negotiate with people that think that kind of thing because to them it’s all bad and evil. Nixon was corrupt but at least he thought government had a role. We haven’t even touched on his Reaganomics.
Reagan is the one that started defining the government as evil. He said "The scariest words you can hear is ‘in from the government and I’m here to help.’ " That defined the government as bad and evil. From then on anything the government did was bad by definition. He’s very much the start of this major problem of “drown the government in the bathtub” people. He launched the whole wave of them. You can’t negotiate with people that think that kind of thing because to them it’s all bad and evil. Nixon was corrupt but at least he thought government had a role. We haven’t even touched on his Reaganomics.
Yes we can blame Fox News too.
John Birch society predates Regan by decades. Perhaps Regan mainstreamed it. But even that’s debatable.
All sorts of things exist. It doesn’t really matter until someone makes it mainstream.