It seems that there are very few political parties that genuinely support small government & individual responsibility any longer.

Further, given the global financial crisis, governments around the world are clearly moving towards a more interventionist model.

Thus we can expect the nanny state to go mad & we can expect increased regulation of personal freedom.  For example, the Australian Government is planning to censor access to the internet in a similar way to internet censorship in China & North Korea.

We can also expect governments to end up running more businesses.  This is not a good outcome for either the businesses or the citizens.  Bad businesses need to be allowed to fail.  Governments need to be allowed to govern & should apply sensible regulation to businesses.  Confusing the role of government and business does not work in the long run.  We have ample evidence of this in the former USSR.

Perhaps we are seeing the end of an era?  It could be argued that this is an era that was started with the US Declaration of Independence in 1776 and is ending – with what, perhaps a whimper?

Here is a political quiz. It can be found over at Advocates for Self-Government (warning they are Libertarians).