" Over the last several decades, government power has been in the process of massive expansion. One doubts whether this expansion can be turned around by the periodic triumph of a particular party, because the moral consensus necessary for sustained restraint is no longer present. On the long haul, people without a controlling vision beyond economic advancement will simply vote for more. That “more” may mean a temporary tax-break, but only rarely will it mean a cut in services. The more we demand, the more government takes; the more it takes and the more it provides, the more we think it unthinkable that we could do without what is provided. Such a world allows no aristocracy of excellence, for there are no agreed criteria as to what is praiseworthy, and therefore no direction toward which the country as a whole “pulls. "

― D.A. Carson , The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism