https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-role-of-government
The Role of Government
Imagine for a moment living under a government that possessed unlimited and undefined powers, such as Communist China or Nazi Germany.
What rights do you have now that you think you would lose? To whom, or to what, would you turn if you thought the government were treating you unfairly? How many of your own choices in life—what college to attend, what career options to pursue, whether to marry or have children—do you feel you would be free to make?
If contemplating life under such a government seems depressing, that is because it is. Individual liberty and personal happiness cannot coexist with unlimited government.
At the same time, there would be little security for our rights without government or under a government that does not possess sufficient power to effectively promote the public good.
Striking this delicate balance has been a centuries-long endeavor in Anglo-American history.
Initial strides towards limited government came in the Magna Carta (1215), which embodied the principle that the king’s powers were limited and subject to English law.
Nearly five hundred years later, the Petition of Right (1689), citing the Magna Carta, reminded the king that it was the law, not a king, that protected the rights of Englishmen.
For most of human history it was accepted that the political legitimacy of a king was derived from God, not from man, and that both law and liberty were subject to God’s will. Divine Right Monarchs.
Focusing on the king’s violation of a half-century of accepted British common law and the traditionally respected rights of Englishmen, the Petition of Right supported the conviction that liberty required that government be limited. Furthermore, liberty interests might supersede kingly authority.
It also inspired the English Bill of Rights (1689) which contained strict limits to the power of the monarchy and identified certain inalienable political and civil liberties enjoyed by all Englishmen, regardless of royal power.
Together, these three British documents, Magna Carta, Petition of Right, and the English Bill of Rights, contained the basic tenets of limited government that would come to influence the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
A philosophical shift in thinking about the proper role and source of government itself was also underway in the late 1600s, and was given effective voice in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690).
Locke argued that governmental legitimacy was based on the consent of the governed and on a responsibility to protect natural rights. While the Petition of Right accepted the notion of the divine right of kings and merely reminded the king that previous monarchs had respected traditionally accepted liberties, Locke’s argument was radically different: people not only voluntarily agree to be governed, but possess rights that flow from nature itself, not from kingly decree. Further, the very purpose of government is not to rule but to protect those rights.
“The great and chief end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their [lives, liberties and property]” (John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1690).
Locke also argued that when a government no longer had the consent of the people, or did not adhere to its proper role of protecting fundamental liberties, then the people have the right to change or overthrow it.
Thomas Jefferson would echo these arguments in the Declaration of Independence (1776), asserting that “the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [wrongful seizure of power].” Therefore, according to Jefferson, the king was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
In the Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), John Locke argued that governmental legitimacy was based on the consent of the governed and on a responsibility to protect natural rights.
Once free of Great Britain and wary of living under a government that possessed too much authority, Americans set out to form a new nation.
The first attempt came in the Articles of Confederation (1781), which adhered very closely to the principle of limited government; perhaps too closely. The Articles established a “firm league of friendship,” and was little more than a loose association of sovereign nation-states with a weak central government. It was a government run by congress with no president!
It could not tax or regulate foreign and interstate commerce. It had neither an executive nor judicial branch to enforce its laws or mediate disputes. Further, any alterations to the Articles that might address these weaknesses had to be unanimously approved by the states, making changes nearly impossible. Can you imagine today’s Congress having to come to unanimous approval to pass any Bill in the House and Senate??
By 1787, it became obvious to many that the Confederation government was too limited in its scope and authority, and a convention was called in Philadelphia to address its deficiencies.
What emerged from the Constitutional Convention elevated limited government from mere theory to a practical governing philosophy. Through a series of complex structures, innovations, and mechanisms, the U.S. Constitution both empowers and limits government, while providing the framework for each successive generation to regulate that balance.
One feature of the Constitution that both empowers and limits the national government’s reach is the enumeration of powers. Article 1, Section 8 sets out the specific and finite powers that the national government may exercise.
Although Article 1, Section 8 only specifically addresses the legislative (or law-making) branch of the national government, its enumeration of powers also provides limits on the president (who enforces the law) and on judicial officials (who interpret and apply the law) as well.
What emerged from the Constitutional Convention elevated limited government from mere theory to a practical governing philosophy.
The Constitution’s deliberate separation of powers, enforced through a system of checks and balances, is another feature that serves to limit our government.
Liberty is most threatened when any person or group accumulates too much power. The Founders, therefore, divided our national government into three distinct branches and gave to each not only specific powers, roles, and modes of election, but ways to prevent the other two branches from taking or accumulating power for themselves.
The president, for example, is commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces. However, it is the legislative branch that can declare war, and raises and maintains the armed forces through funding. Congress may impeach the president if it believes he is abusing authority as his commander in chief. Likewise, the president may refuse attempts by Congress to micro-manage wartime decisions on the basis of his role as commander in chief.
This system serves to limit government by first lodging the various powers of government in different branches, then pitting those branches against one another in a jealous quest to preserve their power.
Perhaps the most definitive limitations on government are found in the Bill of Rights. A firewall protects a computer from outside attempts to harm it, so too does the Bill of Rights guard fundamental rights, natural and civil.
In fact, far from most Americans’ popular understanding of the Bill of Rights as a “giver” of rights, it is actually the “limiter” of government authority.
The First Amendment’s words, for example, that “Congress shall make no law…,” significantly constrain governmental action in the areas of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition. In similar fashion, the Fourth Amendment limits the executive branch’s ability to invade one’s home without probable cause and a warrant.
Liberty and anarchy are incompatible. Liberty and unlimited government are, too. The Constitution, through its unique approaches to balanced government, was designed to harmonize these positions by protecting rights while promoting competent government.
https://www.ushistory.org/gov/1a.asp
Why do governments exist? One major reason is that they create rules. But what rules are necessary or desirable? That is open to question, and different types of governments have certainly created a wide variety of rules.
GOVERNMENTs almost certainly originated with the need to protect people from conflicts and to provide law and order. Why have conflicts among people happened throughout history? Many people, both famous and ordinary, have tried to answer that question.
Perhaps human nature dictates selfishness, and people inevitably will come to blows over who gets what property or privilege. Or maybe, as KARL MARX explains, it is because the very idea of “PROPERTY” makes people selfish and greedy.
Whatever the reasons, governments first evolved as people discovered that protection was easier if they stayed together in groups and if they all agreed that one (or some) in the group should have more power than others. This recognition is the basis of SOVEREIGNTY, or the right of a group (later a country) to be free of outside interference.
Part of a government’s function is to protect its citizens from outside attack. Ancient Chinese emperors constructed a “Great Wall” to defend the borders of their empire.
A country, then, needs to not only protect its citizens from one another, but it needs to organize to prevent outside attack.
Sometimes they have built Great Walls and guarded them carefully from invaders. Other times they have led their followers to safe areas protected by high mountains, wide rivers, or vast deserts.
Historically, they have raised armies, and the most successful ones have trained and armed special groups to defend the rest. Indeed in the twentieth century, governments have formed alliances and fought great world wars in the name of protection and order.
In more recent years, government responsibilities have extended to the economy and public service. This, in my opinion is where the train jumped off the tracks.
An early principle of capitalism dictates that markets should be free from government control. But when economies spun out of control during the 1930s, and countries sank into great depressions and governments stepped in.
The United States Congress created the FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM in the early twentieth century to ward off inflation and monitor the value of the dollar. FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT and his “BRAIN TRUST” devised New Deal programs to shock the country into prosperity.
Perhaps government responsibility to provide social programs to its citizens is the most controversial of all. In the United States the tradition began with the New Deal programs, many of which provided people with relief through jobs, payments, and food.
During the 1960s PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON unveiled his “GREAT SOCIETY” programs aimed at eliminating poverty in the entire country.
Many European countries today provide national medical insurance and extensive welfare benefits. Many Americans criticize these programs as expensive ventures that destroy the individual’s sense of responsibility for his/her own well being. So, the debate over the proper role of government in providing for its people’s general welfare is still alive and well today.
Though the rules and responsibilities vary greatly through time and place, governments must create them. Governments provide the boundaries for everyday behavior for citizens, protect them from outside interference, and often provide for their well-being and happiness.
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-role-of-government
The American Founders were careful students of history. Thomas Jefferson, in his influential A Summary View of the Rights of British America, prepared in 1774, noted that “history has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.”
Patrick Henry summed up the importance of history thus: “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.” History — the lamp of experience — is indispensable to understanding and defending the liberty of the individual under constitutionally limited, representative government.
Through the study of history, the Founders learned about the division of power among judicial, legislative, and executive branches; about federalism; about checks and balances among divided powers; about redress and representation; and about the right of resistance, made effective by the legal right to bear arms, an ancient right of free persons.
Liberty and limited government were not invented in 1776; they were reaffirmed and strengthened. The American Revolution set the stage for extending the benefits of liberty and limited government to all. As John Figgis, professor of modern history at Cambridge University, noted at the beginning of the 20th century:
The resounding phrases of the Declaration of Independence … are not an original discovery, they are the heirs of all the ages, the depository of the emotions and the thoughts of seventy generations of culture.
The roots of limited government stretch far back, to the establishment of the principle of the higher law by the ancient Hebrews and by the Greek philosophers. The story of the golden calf in the Book of Exodus and the investigations of nature by Aristotle both established — in very different ways — the principle of the higher law. Law is not merely an expression of will or power; it is based on divine principles. The legislator is as bound by law as is the subject or citizen; no one is above the law.
So, what we need now, in order to bring government back under control, is the courage to place the health of the constitutional order and the future of the American system above short‐term political gain.
The original American Founders were willing “to mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Nothing even remotely approaching that would be necessary for today’s members of Congress to renew and restore the American system of constitutionally limited government.
In defending the separation of powers established by the Constitution, James Madison clearly tied the arrangement to the goal of limiting government power:
“It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next instance oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
For limited government to survive, we need a renewal of both of the forces described by Madison as controls on government: dependence on the people, in the form of an informed citizenry jealous of its rights and ever vigilant against unconstitutional or otherwise unwarranted exercises of power, and officeholders who take seriously their oaths of office and accept the responsibilities they entail.
So, what do you think folks? Do we simply need to know our history and go back to the teachings of our founding fathers when it comes to the role of government?