James Madison said “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” This is a basic premise for a healthy distrust of government. It is the reason for the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and religion. It is also the reason for the Second Amendment that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Accountability in government rests in the people. We have the weapons of free speech and the vote to hold that accountability. But as you see, the government has coerced and used taxpayer money to buy big media, high technology, big pharma, science, and other industry to censure dissent that might impede government authority.
John Locke (1632–1704) substantially influenced the American form of Constitutional Republic. He posited that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. Arguing that men are naturally free and equal, government was the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property. Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments.
This premise had come to America even before Locke’s birth when the Pilgrims left England under religious persecution. Their doctrine of government found in the Mayflower Compact was reflected in the Lockean theory: “Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.” We are a nation spawned from a healthy distrust of a government that undermines personal liberty.
Common sense should tell you that a government using your money to support policies that raise your costs of living by 30%, threatening to remove your ability to feed yourself and your family if you don’t inject yourself with a government-approved serum, censuring your every word questioning its policies by saying it’s misinformation, and refusing its primary duty of national security by protecting the borders—that government is not only against you, but also against God as it pursues evil ends. As in Acts 5:29, the apostles said, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” To trust this government with your personal health makes no sense. We all need to revive a healthy distrust of an overreaching government and resist its tentacles of tyranny.
