Stuck in the middle and What do we really believe?

I'm about as much of a Libertarian as you can get. I want as small and as unintrusive a government as possible.
So I'm stuck between two opposing forces that want to run my life. The left wants to tell me how to spend my money, and the right wants to tell me how to live my life. Both feel I'm to stupid to figure this out for myself and that the government needs to force me to do the right thing.
I don't believe a government should be involved in any type of social safety net that this allows us to become bad lazy* to not have to think about or plan for the future. Why should we the government will take care of us. We no longer feel the need to take personal responcibilty for our lives the government will do that for us.
Used to be that if we fell down our family, our church or a local charity** was there to help us pick ourselves back up so we could stand on our own two feet. That is if we even bothered to ask for help.
We used to have a pride in our ability to pick ourselves up and start over. We didn't need no stinking help. We could stand on our own two feet. Our forefathers would of been ashamed of how far we have fallen. How we can't get off the government crack that is our "entitlement" system. This system that slaved ourselves to.

You can not be truly free if you rely on other to take care of you.

On to the other side there our those who feel they have the right to tell me how to live my life and who I can love. This is the one that is a little more insidious of the two, because they cloak what they want as doing it for my own good or trying to save my soul. Who can argue against that. They just have the best intentions, but what do they say about the road to hell. To me this is just more bad lazy think. If you can't win over people in the court of public opinion, just in act legislation that will force them to act as you wish.

Now to the second part of the title. If we, and say we because I have side with the right, because our stated beliefs line up the most. If we say we believe in personal liberty and small government, why do we grow the power of government and restrict choice when it gets us something we want?

So again I ask, what do we really believe?

*A post to follow on good lazy and bad lazy.
**A post to follow on turning to Family, church or local charities instead of the government.