If nothing else, the release of the Reform Party election platform has achieved one thing: it has brought back the hysterical Liberal rhetoric of yesteryear. The document's $11-billion in proposed federal spending cuts were variously described as mean, divisive, an attack on the poor, an attack on the middle class, and a blueprint for the Americanization of Canada -- all the things the Grits used to say about the Tory cuts during the party's long and glorious reign in opposition, before going on to slash five times as much themselves.

Whatever it may mean for nostalgic newspaper columnists, the recent twitching of the Liberals' hyperbolic nerve is of greater political significance. I don't suggest that Reform's "Fresh Start" is enough to start the government, in the Prime Minister's phrase, "shaking in our pants." But it has certainly succeeded in setting the terms of the national debate. Far ahead in the polls though they may be, the Liberals have been put in the position of responding to Reform's detailed and aggressive proposals with vague, watered-down versions of their own. The parallels with Ontario's recent election cannot be lost on anyone.

What, then, is this platform that provokes such Grit oaths? For "mean," apparently, we are to take an increase in the basic and spousal tax exemptions by a total of nearly $4000, a measure that would take thousands of the poorest families off the tax rolls altogether. The "divisive" charge probably refers to the proposal to extend eligibility for the child care deduction to all parents, including those who stay at home. The attack on the middle class? That would be the $4-billion increase in federal funding for medicare and post-secondary education.

If the Reform document is marked by such shrewd tactical manoevures, intended to insulate the party from Grit demagoguery, it nonetheless makes a brave pass at a coherent philosophy of government. At bottom, it attempts to ask two questions: What's a government for? And what, in particular, is a federal government for?

Top marks for the party's answer to the first: the role of government is to do those things we cannot do for ourselves. The maxim, that government should only do what only government can do, is rooted less in the belief that you will probably spend your money better than the government will spend it for you than it is in the principle that the proponents of state spending should at least bear the burden of proof. Unless we think that taking people's money and bossing them about is a good thing in itself, we should presumably wish to do so no more than is strictly necessary.

The principle of necessity, on examination, would exclude a state-run broadcaster -- now that viewers can pay for the programs they want -- a state-run passenger railway, and a state-run postal service, which is why Reform proposes to privatize all three, along with a host of other government agencies, notably the CRTC. It is, by the same principle, part of government's role to redistribute income, since there is no reason to believe the distribution arising from luck and individual effort would conform to any collective definition of social justice.

Here Reform wobbles a bit. The proposal to more narrowly target equalization transfers is fair enough -- it is absurd to define seven of the ten provinces in one of the world's wealthiest countries as "have-nots" -- as is the pledge to put the "insurance" back in unemployment insurance. But the suggestion to scrap the Canadian International Development Agency seems based more on instinct than reason, while the outright abolition of federal transfers for social assistance descends into incoherence: transfers for welfare are no longer earmarked as such, but are lumped in with health and education under the Canada Health and Social Transfer.

Indeed, the party is at its most muddled on the role of the federal government relative to the provinces. The preference for devolving powers to the smallest government wherever possible -- in effect, putting the burden of proof on the federal side -- is not justified by any principle of least interference, as in the case of the public versus private debate. What is clear, however, is that if the federal government is to transfer funds to the provinces, it has to have a reason: either to equalize revenues, or as an incentive for provincial compliance with national standards.

What, then, is the point of increasing federal transfers for medicare to rich and poor provinces alike, as Reform proposes, while at the same time removing any federal conditions that might be attached to it? Only to allow two groups of politicians to claim credit for spending the same dollars. A strange suggestion, from the party of smaller government.