My Buddy TJ

A short one today, I can't seem to get away from the political stuff.

I hear all sorts of arguments back and forth about the role of government, how big it should be, how small, what a government's role should be. Unless you're advocating anarchy or totalitarianism any of these arguments are just different shades of gray.
   But I think people making these arguments are forgetting the first principles of government. When you decide what a government actually is then making the arguments about size and scope and influence becomes much clearer.

So, here's how I see it. The first principle is that the power to govern derives from the consent of the governed. This is the basic idea that the entirety of the United States is founded on. It's the principle that led us to declare independence and it's the principle that our Constitution holds at its core.
   Taking that as a given, then, the role of government is to protect the individual liberties of its citizens. That's the beginning and the end of it. Government exists to protect the rights of the people who agree that there should be a government in the first place.

Everything else flows from that. The power of the government to tax is necessary to provide the services that only government should, like roads and sewers and standing armies. The power to regulate business is necessary to protect the government's citizens - you and me - from people and companies who would rather turn a quick buck and hurt people than do things the right way and make a few cents less.
   Bureaucracies by their nature do things slowly and inefficiently, we'll never be able to change that. But when those bureaucracies remember their guiding principles - that they're working to serve the people who allow them to exist in the first place - everything can run much smoother.
   It is most important to remember that 'government' is not something separate from its citizens. Government IS its citizens. Government is all of us together.

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."
-- Thomas Jefferson