Excessive Government Power

Government is just a collection of individuals. They have roles. They have ambitions. Governments can have many forms but ours is a form that is currently seeking more and more power. Surveillance. Mandatory insurance. Definition of marriage. Mandatory back-doors for security systems and built-in taps for communications systems. Some of it is in the name of saving every sick individual. Some of it is in the name of protecting us from every crime and every enemy. For making the government the un-defeat-able, all-powerful guardian of citizens.

But government is just a collection of individuals. With so much power, it inevitably draws very ambitious individuals to itself. And what if some of these individuals become the enemy of the people, using government power for their personal gain? Who will defeat them?

Do you think it never happens? How do you think dictatorships all over the world past and present come to be? They don't arise by themselves, they are products of ambitious individuals and the governments that preceded them.

We have to change our ethos.

We know that sometimes people behave badly, and regarding crime the government must be the minimum necessary to keep our bad side in check. That's all it should be.

Government should protect every citizens right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, just as our founders wrote in the constitution.

In this role it must simply punish anyone who violates the rights of others. It is not the government's role to prevent crime, although fear of the punishments and some practical measures such as guards may do a lot to deter it.

To get into the business of preventing, rather than punishing, requires a lot more resources. It requires a way to find out what people are doing before they do it. It requires invasion of privacy and it will drive back the threshold of punishable action to merely talk so that trials may be conducted before a person has committed a real crime - a person will be guilty merely of thinking or talking about a crime. That is how crimes will be prevented if we allow it. And we must not allow it. It's not worth the risk to us all. All talk about establishing or guaranteeing security is a smokescreen designed to exploit our human frailties, our fear of violence and death, in order to blind us to what is being done in the name of our safety. It's wicked.

We have to decide that invasion of privacy is a crime, and that the government isn't allowed to invade our privacy in the name of preventing one thing or curing another.

We have to decide that we are willing to risk some safety in order to guarantee freedom. 

We have to decide that our right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness means the right to make decisions and to succeed or fail on our own merits. To be more responsible about our decisions and not to throw our arms up in the air and demand that the government protect us from this or that.

The government should only control what individuals cannot - punishing crimes, regulating the use of the environment in order to preserve it, encouraging research in useful new directions, and the building of infrastructure.

That means no government bail-outs of big companies that failed because they made bad decisions, because that is a wasteful use of everyone's hard-earned tax money. That means no mandatory health insurance, because people should have a choice of how to spend their money. That means no definition of marriage, because that's between individuals and their society.

To be accountable to its role, the individuals who form the government must be fallible. And in order to be fallible they must not possess extreme powers over the people.