Which of these forms of government would be your preference as a way to organize and govern the country in which you live?
Alternative One. A government that attempts to make your best interest its first obligation. Therefore, it decides where you will live, chooses your type of work, ensures you have the essentials necessary for life (food, shelter, clothing, health care) and decides when you get to take time off and gives you options how to use that time off.
Alternative 2. A government that lets you choose how and where to live, but eases your way using its programs to underwrite your costs, reduce your risks, and does its best to protect your interests, as long as you follow its rules.
Alternative 3. A limited government that provides protections to ensure public safety, builds a transportation system to allow you to navigate from where you are to anywhere you choose to go, but otherwise leaves you alone. You are left to choose how and where you live, what work you pursue, what you wear and where you go, and trusts you to choose and use health care as you see fit?
At our founding, We the People mostly agreed that the less government the better; especially less national (federal) government. The people who settled in the New World believed in individual liberty, family, and community. They strongly preferred freedom from government restrictions, and much preferred individuals taking responsibility for their own lives. Caring for others formed their foundational beliefs and motivated them to reach out to others in their communities who were hurting and needed interventions.
Those early Americans gave us a federal constitution that they believed would maximize individual liberty while providing the necessary protections against abuse; they saw abuse coming from over-reaching governments, foreign nations, unhealthy cultural threats, anything that would restrict their God-given rights. They shunned any idea that governments would provide life essentials to individuals, knowing it would cost those people their liberty.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”[i] – Benjamin Franklin
When Ben Franklin wrote these words, perhaps he saw ahead to our day when it has become common for Americans to assume governments will meet a host of essential needs; education, transportation, health care, food, clothing, shelter. Eventually, that list extended to protecting (or providing) civil rights protections related to sexual preference, abortion, and discrimination masking as “justice.” It led to more than a loss of individual liberty; it gave us government going further into debt by the second to provide for us what we originally provided for ourselves.
Look back at the three alternatives that started this chapter. We have not yet become a nation in which the government determines everything, at least not directly. Neither, however, do we represent the intentions of We the People at our founding described in “Alternative Three” which maximizes liberty.
You cannot avoid politics
We are, today, caught in an expanding net of government-entanglements regarding our daily needs, choices, and provisions of essential services. Nearly every aspect of daily life is now subject to politics through laws, regulations, ordinances, taxes and the influence of both elected and unelected officials.
You may say you hate politics and government, but you may also say you love liberty and freedom. You cannot have one without the other.
If you choose to live a full life, pursuing happiness (paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence,) you cannot avoid politics. Why? Nearly everything you do has been affected by the political decisions of those you elect to represent you, and the outcomes from the choices they make. It would be possible to create an endless list of proofs, but it would be of little value for you.
Accept the reality that if liberty is important to you, if you enjoy freedom, value human life, and want to pursue your own happiness, you need at a bare minimum, to gain an understanding of how our government works. You need to know this so you can help those who govern make wise decisions about individual and corporate liberty. You should be influencing those who have political power urging them to avoid a central government that claims to have your best interests in mind, but in reality, feeds itself to become the single authority that decides how you live and die; as its power and reach has increased, your liberty has decreased.
This is the introduction to my new textbook currently in progress. Titled How Our Government Really Works.
[i] Attributed to Benjamin Franklin in a letter from the Philadelphia Assembly to the Pennsylvania Governor in 1755.