Government has grown so large, and inserted itself into our lives at so many levels, most of us have lost sight of what the Founders originally had in mind when they spoke of the proper role of government. If you go back, now, and study the history, you will find that it is really quite a short list, only four items:
(1) protect the natural rights of people
(2) enforce private contracts
(3) provide for the national defense
(4) ensure property rights.
I want to begin with the first item on my short list, protecting the natural rights of people. When we speak of "natural" rights, we must distinguish them from man-made rights. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are natural rights; the "right" to attend school at government expense or on a subsidized student loan are man-made rights. Two very different things.
Let's be clear. It is not the protection of our natural rights that has led to the bloat in modern government; it is the creation, enforcement, and maintenance of a whole laundry list of "unnatural" man-made rights that has ballooned the size of government. Have we finally entered an Orwellian age where, as a people, we can no longer distinguish between the two? Where opportunity is confused with obligation? Where entitlement replaces responsibility? Where success is confused with quota? Where progress is defeated by regulation? What you and I must seek is a different America, an America where no idea is punished, no risk is stalled, no work reduced, and no freedom infringed.
Take the pursuit of happiness, for instance. It is one of our natural rights. America is not about happiness, it is about the pursuit of happiness. Every man living by his own light without the threat of interference or the guarantee of success.
America is not about the achievement of some goal, or the capture of some trophy, or the triumph of some success. It is about the process of seeking something. It is about incompletion, dissatisfaction, striving, and imperfection.
The very idea upsets others. The pursuit of what? Where? By whom? On whose authority?
And, if the pursuit of happiness is about incompletion and dissatisfaction, it is also about failure. We cannot go around passing laws and creating bureaucracies whose job it is to shelter each and everyone of us from all our pains, all our failures, all our mistakes and all our misfortunes.
Why should we bailout banks and airline operators and car manufacturers? Or run a nationalized rail service? Or subsidize loans to finance exports? Or mandate a minimum wage? Or subsidize student loans? Or hand out food stamps? These are all generous ideas, compassionate programs born in the hearts of a good and loving people. They are all designed to guarantee happiness — and they are all wrong, for it is the pursuit they destroy, and with it, our humanity. There is, after all, no such thing as a free lunch.
If you tax me to subsidize him, the loss I suffer is greater than the benefit he receives. There's no getting around that. Which brings us to my next position paper, in about two weeks' time: How to pay for government.