Ayn Rand was some kind of sociopath who put fancy pseudo-intellectual glosses on behavior considered immoral since humans swung from trees, Ronald Reagan made records for the American Medical Association spooking housewives with the specter of "Big Government" in the same tones as "communist," and libertarians all seem to have a series of broken-record Constitutional theories detailing how our limited federal government is almost divine in inspiration.
But what none of them realize is that they are all really in favor of big government. Everybody is in favor of big government. They just prefer differing sources.
Let's call this Attorney at Arms First Law of Political Thermodynamics: political power can neither be created nor destroyed. There is a finite and fixed amount in the universe. You can rearrange it and you can vest it in institutions not called "government," but it is always there.
The structure of the U.S. Constitution as it was originally conceived did not create a small government. It created a limited federal government, but expected the states to exercise unlimited power. In 1789, states could limit free speech, establish religion, censor the press, limit who could vote, and so on, if permitted by their own Constitutions.
If you exclude the slavery issue—which you can't honestly do—this might have made a lot more sense at the time. Communication was difficult over such a vast territory and states had differing cultures, religious compositions, and traditions.
Sparing the details, eventually the U.S. Constitution came to impose more and more requirements on the states. A fundamental change occurred both in the spirit and the letter of the Constitution after the Civil War. The federal government rose up to fill a power vacuum (another version of the First Law might be: nature abhors a political vacuum) when current institutions couldn't resolve the issue of slavery. It solved a problem. To do so, it expanded its power. The result wasn't just the abolition of slavery, but a centralization of power in the federal government.
In the gilded age, the states still tried to resolve some problems on their own initiative. When they tried to do so, now the Supreme Court would tell them they were violating due process. When the federal government tried to do the same thing—say, establish some kind of labor laws—the Court would say it was beyond their power.
If neither the states nor the federal government had these powers in this era who did? Was it put beyond reach by the Court? No. At this point in history, much of what we might call government was vested in corporations or trusts. There were company towns that issued company money. Other organizations, such as labor unions, rushed in to fill the void too. But the failure of consolidation of central power created an era of political decay in the state.
The Money Power couldn't deal with the Depression. It created it after all. The states couldn't either. Thus, the federal government did and it had to get the Court's view of its power out of the way to do so.
Then the federal government had to fight World War II. Extraordinary powers were given to it, at least by the tacit approval of the people and the Congress. Some of these were necessary for the war effort, like rationing. Some were a big mistake, like Japanese internment. But when the power was vested in states, weren't blacks "interned"? When it was vested in corporations, wasn't the worker? Wherever the power lies, there will be abuses. There's nothing unique about federal power.
Now, the Tea Party imagines some serene utopia of limited government inspired by their pied piper heroes like Ayn Rand, Reagan, and Palin.
But this does not occur. Nowhere on earth or in recorded history has their been an unfilled power vacuum. You could say that there is indeed limited government in Afghanistan and Somalia, but what you mean is there is a limited state. There is an insufficient state in Mexico, and it is at war with the drug cartels.
I am an unabashed statist. The republican state is the only institution of power that is set up to be run by the people, not by wealth, not by lineage, and not by mere force of arms. You can dream of a utopia where no state is necessary. But what happens when there is a war, a depression, or a crime wave? People demand resolution from any means. If not the state, then perhaps the military, a strongman, or a corporation?
There will be big government. You just have to pick what kind you want: a republic, a warlord, a dynasty, or a joint-stock company.