By John F. Di Leo -
The Question: What is the US Government's key purpose?
The Answer: To make sure we're left alone.
Now, it’s not only to leave us alone… that's just part of it.
The Bill of Rights is a list of specific ways that the government itself is specifically directed to leave us alone.
But it's much more than that.
The Constitution – first in the world of its kind – was written to design a government that is only big enough – not too big, just big enough – to be able to help us, the people, to be left alone. Not just to be left alone by government, but to be left alone by everybody.
So, the government is empowered to have a military… to ensure that foreign countries don't attack us, and don’t meddle with our international trade.
The government is empowered to maintain some kind of stable currency, and enforce freedom of contract… so that we can buy and sell and trade and engage in business freely, free to prosper with easily negotiable instruments, without being limited by the restrictions of a barter economy, so we can have a business of our own or work for someone else, have one job or many, and have career options galore.
The government is empowered to manage a criminal justice system… so that people who attack, rob, rape or kill their fellow man can be removed from society. A functioning criminal justice system protects our homes and schools, our neighborhoods and towns, our shopping centers and entertainment districts… It makes sure that criminals leave us alone.
The government is empowered to manage a post office and allocate the airwaves… so that people can freely communicate with each other; communication is a critical element of a free society.
The government is empowered to manage roads… so that we can travel from place to place, even pick up and move, so that if somebody's taking advantage in one place (like some monopoly running a company town), you can get out, and go where you'll be left alone.
We usually use lofty words like Liberty and Freedom when we talk about government's role in our lives. But we sometimes forget what is meant by these lofty words, so inaccessible after centuries of formal philosophy and dusty classrooms, or so severely twisted and transformed into meaningless buzzwords through political speeches and vapid pop culture..
At its root, the Freedom Philosophy is that we should be free to engage in mutually-desired human contact – going to church together, going to the game together, holding a rally together, doing business with each other, going to the theatre or bar – whenever we want… and avoiding human contact whenever we don't want.
To mingle or not to mingle: it’s our choice, not the government’s.
This past year – ever since the arrival on our shores of a sometimes-fatal virus engineered in a Chinese lab, in fact – every day has been an exercise in the loss of this freedom.
Many of our states have abandoned their roots, and instead emulated other countries, in responding to this virus by setting new and oppressive rules on how we live our lives. How close we can be to other people. What we must wear when we're near other people. How late we can stay out at night, if we do go out. And if we are even "allowed” to go to a store, or restaurant, or church, or business, how far apart we must stay, how much plexiglass the place must erect between us, between our tables, desks, workstations, or pews.
The last year has been an explosion of new ways for the government to control us. Rather than leaving us alone, as the Constitution (that they all took an oath to uphold) requires, the government is regulating our lives more than ever.
We often think of the passage of time, in America, in terms of presidential administrations.
We don't think of the years of the Gingrich Speakership, the Hastert Speakership, the Pelosi Speakership. But we do think of the Eisenhower Years, the Nixon Years, the Carter Years, the Reagan Years. This has always been the practical calendar of our history.
As time marches forward, we will remember this past presidential term as a mix.
The first three Trump Years were years of freedom, years in which regulations were slashed and taxes were cut, and unprecedented economic expansion blossomed from coast to coast. The fourth Trump Year, by contrast (through no fault of his own), will be remembered as the year in which government choked the American people like never before, the year in which state after state violated every tenet of our Founding Fathers' legacy, and unconstitutionally locked down much of the nation, culminating in a fraud-filled election designed to enthrone a new president who would permanently institutionalize many of the "temporary" measures that the China Virus had been used to justify.
In short, having consolidated control of all three federal branches, the Democrats have promised to continue to consolidate their control of the American people as well.
How will America respond? How long will America take it, before remembering our roots, throwing off this alien yoke, and demanding from the government that precious, groundbreaking promise of the Constitution that is our birthright?
copyright 2020 John F Di Leo
John F Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based writer, actor and international trade professional. A former county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, his columns have been published in Illinois Review for twelve years now. "The Tales of Little Pavel," a collection of John's Illinois Review columns on the epidemic of vote fraud, is available on Kindle and at Amazon.com.
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