Government's job is to protect freedom


Go back to the source
I was looking over my global warming FAQ, and I was struck by just how much I could copy/paste into an argument against health care reform, or the TARP fiasco, or the auto bailout.

In every case it's the same. Don't allow dissent. Move too fast for people to think about it. Exaggerate the consequences. Seize MORE government power.

Instead, let's move back.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security…

Pretty powerful words. You can find the complete thing here. These ideas are pretty central (and EXTREMELY well explained) in a novel I just finished. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It's one of the ones I'll be suggesting to teens from now on.

The point is government shouldn't be about protecting your bank or making sure that you can afford a mortgage. It's about preserving your freedom at a minimal cost to anyone else.

That's it.

Most of what our Congress critters and judges and Presidents do today would have gotten them hung for treason a century ago. Compelling someone to buy insurance? Rewriting existing contracts to favor one union over another? Judging using compassion over the law? All of this destroys liberty and would have been punished.

We need to think about that.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - July 22, 2009 at 08:14 AM  Tag


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Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
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