Visual, Evocative Words to Emphasize Something: Grover Norquist’s Messianic Anti-Government Agenda

Whether you are a supporter or a critic of anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, you’ll probably agree with the following statement: Norquist’s agenda is simply to gut the government, period. (It’s an agenda which, in my view, is utterly misguided, myopic, and reprehensible because, over the long term, a marketplace with zero regulation will severely undermine, among other things, the quality of life and safety of the American middleclass and prove ruinous for this nation’s international economic competitiveness as well as for its environment and wildlife.)

But it was only this evening, while watching “NBC Nightly News,” that I learned about the extraordinarily evocative terms in which Norquist has articulated his messianic and unambiguous anti-government fervor in the past: According to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Norquist once told NPR: “I don’t want to abolish government, I simply want to reduce the size where I can drag it to the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal