Authority is the single most defining reason people support a massive centralized government. People listen to authority. The media acts as an authority figure, the politicians act as authority figures and people listen like little chicks following mother duck. Why is it this way?
During the 1960's psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted experiments at Yale University relating to authority. He was testing what people were willing to do if an "Authority figure" was giving them direction. His experiment placed subjects across from one another, with one strapped to a fake electric chair. The subject in the electric chair was an actor. The subject across from him was being tested. The authority figure would ask the actor a series of questions, if he got it wrong the test subject would be compelled to shock the actor. And as the experiment went on, the shock was supposedly getting worse with each incorrect answer. The authority figure would keep asking the test subject to shock the actor even though he was being "visibly" harmed by the decision to do so.
Stunningly this experiment and follow up experiments proved that a range of 28% to 90% of subjects (61% being the national average) were willing to inflict a fatal shock to the actor if told to do so by authority. Authority gives people the psychological cover to harm others without guilt. The support of big government at all costs derives from authority figures telling people to adopt it, at all costs. So when we look at the population of people screaming for higher taxes and war, think of the Milgram study. Most of these people would personally deal the fatal blow to you if told by an authority figure.