Whenever Republicans and Democrats agree, it’s almost never for anything good. Typically, “bi-partisanship” is a code-word for more of your liberty or property to be taken away. As Andrew Napolitano always says, “We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms.”

So when there is common ground, it’s usually in favor of government.

Case in point, the “bi-partisan” response to Egypt.

Mubarak, you see, is not so bad of a guy. Since his ascendancy to power, he has enjoyed rich financial support from his friends in the U.S. - regardless of which party was in power. Second only to Israel, it has received an average of just under $2 billion/year in aid (see: “regime support”) for the last 30 years. So this recent uprising is proving to be a bit of an inconvenience to the big government doctrinaires in D.C.

Vice President Joe Biden, Democrat, wants to frame the narrative properly. Naturally, it would be awful for him to be seen as supporting a tyrant. So he explains to the unlettered masses: “I would not refer to [Mubarak] as a dictator.”

Why not?

“Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with - with Israel.”

In other words, Mubarak is not a dictator because he looks out for U.S. interests - nevermind how he treats his subjects.

Which is essentially Republican ambassador John Bolton’s position: since Mubarak looks out for American interests, we must recognize the nuance between authoritarian and totalitarian.

Democrat Chuck Schumer, while echoing Obama’s calls for respecting the rights of Egyptian citizens, simply wants to make sure that whatever government emerges from the dust-up is one that keeps our interests in mind.

Our continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our hundreds of thousands of troops in dozens of countries should reveal how wholly unserious the Democratic party is at being anti-empire, but no one likes a good fight in the War Room like the GOP. And Republican notables Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, among others, agitate that the populist rebellion may actually be subversively coordinated by anti-American Islamist sentiment. The Egyptian people standing up to their tyrannical government "threatens the very existence our children and our future.“ The next government, you see, may not be as willing to be our pawn in the region.

A secondary theme in all this is the way our representatives in power are comparing and contrasting power over people.

Biden was fairly honest when he said, "Egypt doesn’t have control of its people the way we do here.” Meanwhile, Lieberman, Obama, and the FCC are surely salivating at the effectiveness of Egypt’s “internet kill switch.”

So don’t worry folks. Keep supporting the big government that is so charitable to foreign despots with our money. Our bosses in power know what best suits them, and that’s what really matters.