Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” Paine, like so many others, recognized that the essence of government is coercion. However, we need government and its coercive powers to protect our natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Protecting these rights is the legitimate and moral role of government in a free society. But as Thomas Jefferson warned, “The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.”
Jefferson was absolutely right. Today the average worker pays close to 40 percent of his yearly earnings to federal, state, and local governments. Additionally, there is little that a person can do that is not regulated by some government edict, be it mowing our lawn, riding a bike, flushing our toilets, taking a shower, hiring a gardener, and many other day-to-day activities that used to be considered strictly personal and private.
It's tempting to blame our politicians for an increasingly meddlesome and oppressive government. Yes, we can blame them a tiny bit for not being statesmen, being contemptuous of our Constitution, and dishonest. But the bulk of the blame lies with the American people. Politicians tend to do precisely what we elect them to office to do. We Americans elect politicians to office on their promise to take what belongs to some Americans and give it to other Americans to whom it does not belong. Or we elect them to give some Americans special privileges that are denied other Americans.
Such descriptions may not be flattering to most Americans so let me give a few examples. Welfare is one example where politicians, through the tax code, take the earnings of one American and give them to another. But there are many other examples of this practice: farm subsidies, business subsidies and bailouts, foreign aid expenditures through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and the Agency for International Development. Indeed, more than two-thirds of the federal budget is spent for programs that fit the category of legalized theft.
Then there are special privileges: The government tells one North Carolina landowner that he may plant and sell peanuts and another that he may not. It tells one group of Americans that they can receive a government check for not raising pigs or cows and the rest of Americans that they are not eligible to receive money for not raising pigs and cows. Government tells one group of industries that they are eligible for subsidized loans and loan guarantees, through the Export-Import Bank, and another group of industries that no such subsidies are available. Plus, special privileges are doled out by race and sex.
A senatorial or congressional candidate who tells the electorate that if he wins office he will vote for only those expenditures authorized in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution would go down to blazing political defeat. It is unreasonable to expect a politician to do something, such as respect the Constitution, when doing so is the equivalent of committing political suicide.
Thus, in the task of restoring moral and constitutional government, we shouldn't focus our energies on trying to change the hearts and minds of politicians. We should try to change the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans. We must sell our fellow Americans on the idea that the legitimate and moral role of government is to protect those unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.