The Future of Limited Government

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Every four years, voters in the United States are given a choice between two major party candidates in the Presidential election. We are often told that either of these candidates are the "mainstream" candidates and if you want your vote to count, you need to choose between either one of the two major party candidates who have a "chance" at "winning".

However, for true supporters of limited government and personal liberty, this is often a choice made in vain. If you truly believe in a limited, decentralized government which protects both economic and personal liberties and rights, during most elections there isn't a major party candidate that will generally fit your values. You have a choice between the Democratic Party, of which too many members wish to violate your economic rights and liberties, and the Republican Party, of which too many members wish to violate your personal rights and liberties. This is not a judgment of individuals in either party. Most individual members are doing what they think is right. This is a judgment on those than run the major parties.

To illustrate my own philosophy of government, I've often used an analogy of a road trip. The route and destination are analogous to the choices you make in life and the level of freedom you possess.

Too many big government Democrats want to drive your car for you. They feel that if they know the route better, it's in your own interest to just sit in the back and let them drive the car for you — they will be able to plan the best route and will be able to get to the destination according to the way they think is best. It doesn't matter if you feel that a different route may be better, because they know how to get there better than you do.

Unfortunately for the American people, some Republicans have deviated from the principles that the party was founded upon, limited government and personal responsibility. Therefore, there is also a part of the Republican Party, a segment of big government Republicans that also want to choose the route and destination for you. Rather than driving the vehicle for you, they will let you sit in the drivers seat and give you the illusion that you are making free choices when in reality the government is in the passenger seat next to you with it's own set of omnipotent pedals and a steering wheel that they can use to override any choice they deem as unacceptable. Like the omnipotent Drivers Ed teacher than can take control of the vehicle at any moment, big government Republicans want you to have the illusion that you are making your own choices but in reality are only holding up a smokescreen. If they don't like your choice, they can (and will) quickly override you. The only difference between big government Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans want to give you an illusion that you will be able to choose your destination, when in fact the level of control is the same. Pro-corporate bailout Republicans fit into this category, and it hurts good Republicans like Jeff Flake and Ron Paul.

The proper role of government is not to shepherd you to the "correct" decision, government's role is to protect your rights so that you may make your own choices, whether popular or not, good or bad. Therefore, in the context of the above analogy, to an advocate for limited government, the government is not in your car at all. No judgments can be made on either your route or destination because government is not a participant in the road trip. Instead, government is the mechanic, keeping your car running so that you can make your own decisions while driving.

The proper role of government is not to make sure people make good decisions. There is no role for personal morals in government. The real purpose of government is to maintain minimum social order for people to live their lives by their own morals through their own choices. The key word in that sentence is minimum. For too long, authoritarians have used the guise of "social order" to induce massive control and individual rights violations. To protect minimum social order, government exists to protect nothing more than individual rights, with individual rights being defined broadly enough to include the right to do anything until you restrict the freedom of someone else to do what they please — the classic example being that you have the right to swing your fists through the air, but the right to swing your fist ends at the tip of another person's nose. This self-correcting view of rights is the only way to ensure freedom. Some may even question whether government is the proper avenue for the protection of rights. Throughout history, it is rare to find an institution that has as evil a record on protecting rights as government does. However, while government may be a bad mechanism for protecting rights, it's probably least bad way we have, and certainly the only demonstrable way. Barry Goldwater illustrated this point when he stated in his classic Conscience of a Conservative, "All too often we have put men in office who have suggested spending a little more on this, a little more on that, who have proposed a new welfare program, who have thought of another variety of 'security.' We have taken the bait, preferring to put off to another day the recapture of freedom and the restoration of our constitutional system. We have gone the way of many a democratic society that has lost its freedom by persuading itself that if 'the people' rule, all is well."

However, the deference to government power is moving us from the individualistic "Father knows best" mentality to our current way, a "government knows best" mentality where Barack Obama and his band of merry travelers will dictate economic planning from above because they know best. This is the same type of argument that Justice Holmes gives in allowing the power of government to dictate what's best in the 1927 decision Buck v. Bell in which Holmes reasoned that government could dictate solutions to social problems. By reasoning that it was within the power of government to forcibly sterilize the "feeble minded and socially inadequate," Holmes' reasons for why the government could sterilize women against their will and the reasons behind the entire platform of Barack Obama's Presidential campaign are identical: government knows best, and government will attempt to solve social problems. If there is one lesson to take from history, it's that deference to government knowledge and planning is dangerous and responsible for most of the suffering in the world.

However, under no objective analysis have the Republicans done any better. Too many Republicans have given in to the demands of big government is an effort to hold on to power. The Republican Party is not in the gutter because they have been too laissez-faire. The Republican Party is in the gutter because the status quo of the GOP has thrown the principles of limited government into the trash. Discretionary domestic spending under George W. Bush rose at a higher rate than it did under Bill Clinton. The legacy of George W. Bush will be as the Great Spender and the Great Regulator. If you are proud of the record of the GOP in the last eight years, you are not an advocate for limited government.