Limited Government: Principles of the Constitution

Limited Government: Are the Good Times Really Over?

from an article published in Imprimis
March 2008 - Volume 37, Number 3

by Charles R. Kesler

Amidst all the campaign slogans calling for change in the federal government during this election season, "utterly missing ... is a serious focus on limited or constitutional government." The Democrats want more government, not less, so they can promote their ideal of socialism. The Republicans, however, are promoting a socialist program as well, called "compassionate conservativism". Both parties believe the a bigger, more expensive, more powerful federal government is the solution to the problems in the dangerous world in which we live.

Mr. Kesler makes the following seven propositions to show how and why limited, constitutional government is the real answer.

0. "Limited government can be distinguished from small government. The two concepts are easily confused because they usually overlap." He sites government spending during World War II. The federal government spent 43.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This government was certainly big and expensive, and yet its purposes remain limited. We need to spend what we need to spend, but only on those items and services that constitutionally belong to the federal government.
0. "Limited government can enhance our freedom - even though it costs money." "Were Americans in 1944 somehow less free than if we had not spent so copiously to stop Hitler and to liberate Western Europe?" he asks. The libertarian viewpoint is that every dollar spent on government comes at the cost of freedom. By thinking this way, we assume that government and freedom are polar opposites. Limited government is merely limited tyranny. All government, whether just or unjust, is oppression. The Founding Fathers, however, did not take such a view. They distinguished sharply between just and unjust forms of government. "What is the Declaration of Independence but a great meditation on the difference between the absolute despotism contemplated by King George III and the freedom that the Americans hoped to enjoy under the own form of self-government? The Declaration does not proclaim that just government is merely less oppressive than unjust government. Our ancestors thought that republican governments like ours were good because, grounded in human nature and operating by law and consent, they affirmed human liberty."
0. "Limited government can be compatible with energetic government." To have a limited government does not mean that the government does as little as possible. Fighting terrorists and prosecuting criminals requires an energetic government. The separation of powers contemplated by the Founding Fathers "was meant to prevent the worst and to enable the best kind of government." It was designed to allow each branch to perform its duty well.
0. "Limited government must be constitutional government. Government must be limited to its proper ends, but its means must be capable of effecting those ends." The Constitution is the means by which the government understands its goals.
0. "Limited government, in the sense of constitutional government, is opposed to the political assumptions of the modern state." The idea of the modern state, whether pursued by Germany or by Russia or by the proponents of a "living constitution", is that human rights are not fixed and unchanging. The state is the source of all human rights. People are granted rights by the society or government under which they live. Thus, the constitution must be free to adapt and evolve along with the state that it created. There is no such thing as an "inalienable" right.  According to this view, we give the rulers power and the rulers give us rights. The more power we give to the government, the more rights it will give us in return. This is simply false. The Declaration of Independence states that the Founding Fathers believed that we as human had certain "inalienable rights" that were granted from God, not from a government. The Constitution and the government it formed were founded upon the central concept of inalienable, God-given rights that would never belong to the government. Those rights included "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." They did not include an education, a job, and free healthcare. The modern state cannot give us more rights unless we relinquish our God-given rights.
0. "The decline of limited government in the 20th century was not inevitable." Modern liberals would have us believe that the Darwinian evolution of our society, our technology, and our challenges made big government unavoidable. According to authors like Robert Higgs, in his book called Crisis and Leviathan, America's "state apparatus" did not grow uniformly in response to new conditions of the 20th century, "but rather in fits and starts, usually in response to political or economic emergencies." This ought to give us confidence that the continued growth of government is not inevitable. On the other hand, the demise of big government is not inevitable, either.
0. "Limited government is not a lost cause." The restoration of constitutional government will require "searching political reconsideration as well as profound political prudence".

The bottom line is that we do not need a "change" of government. We need a "restoration" of constitutional government. It was constitutional government, guided by the principles of the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution, that created the greatest, most prosperous, most generous country in the world. It is unconstitutional government, guided by the principles of the modern state, that is creating a weak, bankrupt, frightened, self-centered, second-rate country. Our one great hope is in the Constitution. Our ultimate destruction is in anything else.