During Rand Paul's historic filibuster last week, liberal actor John Cusack tweeted, "For gods sake where are the democrats?"

The only Democratic politician to support Paul on the Senate floor was Sen. Ron Wyden from Oregon. But he was also complimented by no less than the likes of Code Pink, the ACLU, and John Stewart.

I suspect many more Democrats agreed with Paul on this no-brainer issue, but the degree to which they are poisoned by partisanship they can't admit it publically or even to themselves. Paul was criticizing their man in the White House, and they won't give him credit for being right, even it means standing silent on whether the government has the right to assassinate its civilians. That's really something to be proud of.

For John Cusack and other liberals, I ask you who did publically support Rand, which ACLU official Christopher Anders called a "courageous and historic stand"?

Paul is a Tea Partier. Helping him on the floor was Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee, Tea Party favorites. A dozen Tea Party congressman went to the Senate chambers after almost everyone else left.

In other words, nobody would be there to stand up against the government when it says it can assassinate you if it weren't for Tea Partiers.

No issue is more important than this one. And the Tea Party was the only group there to speak up.

After more than 35 years in the Senate, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana was ousted Tuesday by a tea party challenger in a Republican primary that showed how hard it is for a veteran lawmaker known for his ability to compromise to win reelection in the current political environment.

A self-described militant Marxist party whole heartedly supports the far-left Occupy Movement, according to an article on the Party for Socialism and Liberation website.

In "Occupy LA has militant, anti-capitalist start," the PSL accurately summarizes (at least in the headline) the socialism-inspired protests raging around the country.

The PSL has called for a Marxist revolution in the United States, and has a history of supporting political riots in California.

The Occupy movement contrasts starkly with the peaceful Tea Party movement, which saw nary an arrest despite thousands of protests involving millions of people over the course of over two years. In one day, 700 Occupiers were arrested.

Occupiers have also been seen clashing with police and defecating on police cars, and their bizarre "collectively thinking" People Assembly rituals even confound liberals such as Congressman John Lewis.  Evidence even exists that some Occupiers are being paid to protest.

In early August, Standard & Poor's rating agency downgraded the U.S. credit worthiness from AAA to AA+, marking the first time that's happened since the country achieved AAA status in 1917.

A week earlier, the White House and congressional leaders reached a deal on raising the debt limit after a lengthy and high-profile standoff, with the Tea Party largely opposing it because it did not go far enough to cut spending.

That opposition, according to a Ventura County Star editorial on Labor Day, is what caused the national credit downgrade.

That's because the congressional Republicans' intransigent tea party-movement wing, with its reckless rule-or-ruin attack on lifting the debt ceiling, saddled the Republicans with the downgrading of U.S. creditworthiness, introducing uncertainty into the financial system when the markets were craving certainty and dealing a body blow to the fragile recovery of consumer confidence.

It wasn't decades of runaway spending during the administrations of Bush and Obama that culminated in massively expensive stimulus packages, or that the United States effectively resorted to printing money under the  "quantitative easing" program in order to meet its debt obligations that caused S&P to rethink our credit rating. No, no, no, it was those people in the lawn chairs with the flags.

Standard & Poor itself seems to have a different take on why it downgraded United States credit worthiness.

"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics,"

In other words, there's too much debt and the Boehner/Obama deal didn't do anything to address that, which is exactly why the Tea Party opposed it.

To make the point even more clear, the head of sovereign ratings at S&P said, "This is a problem that's been a long time in the making--well over this administration, the prior administration," adding that the debt-to-GDP ratio is central concern to the agency.

Excessive debt was the primary cause of the downgrade. Not the Tea Party. In fact, S&P implicitly validated the Tea Party's opposition to the Boehner/Obama plan. If there's one group of people that shouldn't get any blame for the reduced AA+ rating, it's the Tea Party, yet that's exactly who got assigned the blame in the Star editorial.

The S&P official did say that Congress should not have waited until two days before the deadline to reach an agreement with the White House. However, with all the talk that the Tea Party representatives rejected compromise, the same is true for President Obama and the Democrats. If two parties to a discussion keep rejecting the others' proposals, it seems sort of one-sided to blame only one side for not compromising.

As S&P said, the blame lies with at least two presidential administrations who spent more money than they had. It shouldn't be hung around the necks of the only people who are arguing for any semblance of fiscal sanity.

On Monday, the Star published an editorial entitled, "Irene makes the case for government" in which the paper contrasted government performance in the face of the unusual northeast hurricane with general criticism from small-government conservatives.

Those who believe big government can do no right kept silent when big government swung into action. The much-derided Federal Emergency Management Agency prepositioned 18 disaster-response teams on the East Coast and stockpiled food, water and communications equipment.

The editorial continued to detail the preparations of various public agencies, and noted that hurricane expert Max Mayfield praised the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Mr. Mayfield praised the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for spending the extra money -- Gasp! Federal spending! -- on additional surveillance flights and weather balloons that paid off in better forecasts.

Republican Presidential Candidate Michelle Bachmann was criticized for joking that hurricanes and earthquakes were divine wrath.

Campaigning in Florida, GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said the hurricane, by then reduced to a middling tropical storm, and the East Coast earthquake days earlier were warnings from God about the evils of federal spending.

The editorial board apparently thought she was stone-cold serious even though she was smiled and her audience laughed when she said it. The editorial closed by recommending that conservatives stop talking about downsizing government until hurricane season is over.

The small-government types should hold off on their calls to downsize government. Hurricane season has three more months to run.

The article's premise--that small-government conservatives believe "government can do no right" is false. It assumes that because conservatives oppose big government, they must oppose all government.

I see the fallacy frequently, usually involving infrastructure. It goes like this:

"Oh you don't like big government? So you don't want roads then, huh?"

It's the logical equivalent of asking a drowning man if he drinks water occasionally. "You drink water every day; what's your problem with drowning?"

At the center of the fallacy is the assumption that you can't oppose something in degrees. I like water, I just don't want so much of it I drown in it. A little "Gasp!--Federal spending!" is OK by me, I just don't want to drown in public debt.

The fact that small-government conservatives oppose government in degrees is in our name. We aren't called "no-government conservatives." We want a little government, but not too much.

So when is a good time for government to get involved? If it protects us, and it works, then I think small-government types like myself are OK with it. In fact, conservatives tend to be the strongest supporters of police and the military, even though both are sizable arms of government.

You don't see Tea Partiers on street corners saying no to police and soldiers (but you do see that on the progressive left, interestingly). Nor will you see a lot of Tea Partiers--the fringe right, according to Democrats--opposing the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. How much does the NOAA cost--.000000000000001% of the budget? There are few who care  about that, and the Tea Party did not originate over alarm at the NOAA's encroachment into our lives.

Small-government conservatives DO care when government involves itself in places it should not be or if its involvement does not work.  You don't get to $14 trillion in debt and a $1.3 trillion budget deficit with efficient government, so, believe it or not, there is room to criticize government.

When it becomes expensive, conservatives speak up.

Five of the top six largest federal budget items are progressive sacred cows, totaling two-thirds of all federal spending. If you want to cut back spending on any of those items, why you must oppose roads as well. A real good argument, right? It distorts any attempt to reduce spending or waste.

After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, FEMA started handing out money like it was candy, leading to millions of lost taxpayer dollars and widespread fraud. According to the liberal Huffington Post:

But that allowed thousands of improper and fraudulent payments. FEMA employees awarded money without interviewing applicants or inspecting property and made errors that ranged from recording incorrect banking information to failing to check whether insurance had already covered damage, according to congressional testimony.

HuffPo reported that FEMA is reviewing $600 million it distributed in aid to hurricane victims, and has already asked people to  pay back more than $22 million. Hundreds were convicted for fraud.

If we use the progressive fallacy that if you oppose an excess of something then you must oppose all of it, then if anyone finds it alarming that FEMA wasted millions or hundreds of millions of our dollars, then you must oppose all disaster response efforts.

In the final analysis, "Irene makes the case for government" inadvertently sets up a straw man--a conservative straw man who apparently is making the case for the elimination of all government--and knocks it down with an avalanche of praise for the feds in an attempt to diminish the arguments of those, particularly in the Tea Party, who took upon themselves the abandoned--but crucial--role of government watchdog.