There is a dangerous trend in modern politics, and it doesn’t belong to one political party. It belongs to all of us. Every election cycle, candidates promise to solve another problem. Crime, corruption, affordable housing, inflation, technology, climate, healthcare, education, homelessness — the list grows longer with every campaign.
Likewise, voters increasingly judge their elected officials not by whether they faithfully execute the laws or protect the rights of the people, but by whether they can somehow eliminate every hardship society has ever known. Somewhere along the way, we quietly changed the job description of government.
Our System of Government
The American system never promised that government would make us prosperous, healthy, comfortable, or happy. It promised something much simpler — and much more profound. Government exists to protect the rights of the people. That idea appears plainly in the Declaration of Independence, for those who bother to read it on its 250th anniversary. It states that governments are instituted among men “to secure these rights.”
Not to create, ration, or suspend them whenever they become inconvenient. To secure them.
Every time we ask government to solve another problem, we necessarily ask it to exercise more authority over our individual lives. Some feel that authority is justified. Oftentimes it is not. Just think about the mass surveillance state which followed the events of 9/11.
The Proper Role of Government
Every expansion of governmental power should begin with the same question: Is this the proper role of government?
That question has become remarkably unpopular. Instead, we often hear a much simpler argument: “There ought to be a law.” Perhaps. But every new law restricts someone’s liberty. Every regulation limits someone’s freedom of action. Every enforcement decision carries consequences for real people.
The proper question is not whether government can act, but rather whether it should.
Data Centers
Consider the debate surrounding data centers. Some argue they represent economic progress. Others object to tax incentives, infrastructure costs, environmental concerns, or the locations selected for construction. Reasonable people can disagree about those questions. What they should not do is confuse opposition to one project with opposition to technology itself.
The same people criticizing a proposed data center are likely sending emails, using GPS navigation, streaming movies, storing family photographs in the cloud, shopping online, and perhaps even reading this article on a smartphone. That observation isn’t intended to expose hypocrisy. It illustrates something much larger. Modern society depends on infrastructure such as roads, bridges, electrical grids, water systems, fiber-optic cables, and, yes, data centers.
Using those things does not require us to approve every governmental decision involving them. We can disagree with government policy decisions while still driving on public roads. After all, they are funded by the tax dollars taken from us. We still rely on police officers when we need help. We still expect courts to resolve disputes fairly. Using government services does not require blind acceptance of everything government does.
Likewise, using technology does not require unquestioning support for every policy that involves it.
Homelessness
Citizens understandably become frustrated when they see encampments, panhandling, or individuals struggling with addiction or mental illness in public spaces. Those frustrations are real. But frustration alone does not answer the constitutional question.
What exactly is government supposed to do? Some demand that every homeless person simply be arrested. For what offense? And then what? Our local jail was not built to house every person living in poverty. Nor does the Constitution permit government to imprison people simply because they are poor, unemployed, or socially undesirable.
Others demand that government “solve homelessness.” That raises an equally troubling question. If government possesses the authority to eliminate homelessness, what other aspects of private life should it control? Housing? Employment? Income? Family relationships? Mental health? Personal choices?
History teaches that governments become most dangerous when they acquire broad authority in pursuit of noble objectives. The goal may sound compassionate. The power required to achieve it often is not. That does not mean government, particularly local governments, should ignore homelessness. The government should enforce laws within constitutional limits, protect public safety, maintain public spaces, and provide services where authorized by law.
But those responsibilities must always be carried out equally. That principle is often forgotten.
When a home school cheerleading squad or a baseball travel team stands along a roadway collecting donations for uniforms, most people smile, wave, and contribute a few dollars. When a homeless individual stands nearby holding a cardboard sign asking for help, many demand immediate police action. The point is not that these situations are identical. They are not. The point is that government must apply the law according to objective legal standards — not according to whether society approves of the person asking for money. Equality under the law cannot depend upon popularity.
The Big Question
Ultimately, the question facing every community is much larger than data centers or homelessness. It is whether we still understand why government exists in the first place. Government is not a cure for every human condition. It cannot eliminate poverty, eradicate loneliness, guarantee success, nor remove every hardship from life without assuming powers that free people should hesitate to grant.
The greatest achievement of the American system was not that it created an all-powerful government capable of solving every problem. It was the creation of a limited government whose first obligation was protecting the liberty of the individual. Protected by:
- Constitutionalism — the limiting of a national government with the chains of the Constitution.
- Republicanism — a form of government in which sovereignty rests with the people, expressed through the majority, under the restraint of law.
- Federalism — the decentralization of power amongst the several states and even further into separate, but equal branches of government.
These are the bases of any true Conservative body of thought.
Perhaps we have spent too much time asking whether government is doing enough. Perhaps it is time to begin asking whether the government is doing the right things — and whether, in pursuing worthy goals, it remains faithful to the very purpose for which it was created.
Because a government that remembers its limits is not weak, it is a constitutional one.
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