I am going to reply to this line, but I need to think about it a bit.
"Since 'to govern' MEANS 'to restrict degrees of freedom, how can you be 'liberal' while going crazy growing government?"
I certainly don't begin where you do as to the implication of the word "liberal" or the meaning of the words "to govern". Law is an essential slice of liberty. It's just anarchy without it. And anyway, sometimes restrictions create opportunities. What are property rights but a form of restriction? And yet they are the underlying essence of ownership and markets, which we count as freedoms of a sort.
And for myself, I imagine there's a quantity of government that is the most efficient amount, but I have no idea how a person can calculate what it is, so I don't try. Nor do I care much if an idea is labelled socialist or capitalist. I only care if things work better than the alternative, recognising that any choices we make often have BOTH benefits and costs. The market is the right solution for many things. Government works for others. There's also the space in which markets and governments operate in tandem. Different countries make different choices, and may reasonably do so, because our freedoms allow us to define different answers to the questions that we face.
But this is all rather abstract and highfalutin. I'm going to answer later with some examples.
| 