But today I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time defending my rights against the very regimes that were supposed to protect them. It is eating up my leisure time, and what goes on while I'm at work goes unmonitored. They steal from my pantry while I'm out plowing my fields. What's more, they use their plunder against me, giving my tax dollars to grant-grubbing special interests whom I oppose, who advocate enacting more policy that further reduces my freedom. The bulk of said plunder doesn't even go to help the people the pandering politicians pretend to want to help.
I attend city and county council meetings. State and federal legislature meetings are too far away and are too full time for me to monitor directly. But I've seen the sausage being made, and I think if you were really aware of what goes on in there, you'd be alarmed as well. Even some of the ones on "our side" (whichever side that happens to be) don't understand the proper role of government.
Don't even get me started on administrative bureaucracies that by definition, aren't responsible to the voters. They enact regulations having the force of law, but we have no recourse. We can't vote them out. That is not government by the consent of the governed! The fact is, the government we have bears no resemblance whatsoever to the mechanisms that were invented to keep us safe. It's Fahrenheit 451, without the fire trucks.
If this be a republic, meaning a system of civilization where "the power resides in the people" and "the people" have inalienable rights, I would agree that we "need government" - but in terms of a service we choose to share and direct rather than to be governed (governance). This is a very important distinction. I like the idea of government we control; and find the idea that government should control us pretty distasteful.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it has ever been said better than this: "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 to 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." ~ Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
DeleteOur present regime(s) can take this as a threat or a promise, but this is how it should be.
I am sending this on to friends who share our idea of limited government of the people for the people by the people - your words are going out to faraway places Karl.
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