In a world where human nature itself can’t be trusted not to infringe on freedoms that rightfully belong to everyone, social institutions such as the government are needed. It’s important to carefully note, however, that this shouldn’t restrain the individual as much as encourage proper respect for others, including the members of one’s family circle. That’s why there’s law enforcement. Government should be limited not only in its power but also in the taxes it can impose as well as its spending and borrowing. That’s why many countries have a constitution and don’t take changes to it lightly.
But no one should assume that the government will never try to get away with abusing even its legitimate power. This has become increasingly obvious over time and taken for granted, because many people aren’t so vigilant about watching for it and may not even think there’s a problem with it whenever they do see it, or they may simply be resigned to not being able to stop the abuse regardless. After all, people don’t have regular access to what goes on behind the scenes other than by citizen journalism, and trying to find it for yourself can pose a threat to your very life.
Government can be rather sneaky about its unwarranted intrusions to make them look innocent, too. One of the most powerful evidences of this is the fact that getting student aid, which is government-funded in a great many cases, ends up putting college students in more debt than they can expect to pay back by themselves in their lifetimes and can in turn throw into question why higher education has to be so expensive in the first place. It’s also not surprising for someone to question whose best interests it serves for anything in general to be this demanding on an income, or whether it will negatively impact people’s motivation to do anything that costs money aside from bare essentials.
Politicians with a lot of power and name recognition show soon enough by how they use taxes that their personal comfort seems to be more important to them than protecting freedom and security for the people (but what would you do if you were in that position?). The total cost of Barack Obama’s vacations with his family is just one case in point, and this kind of thing is to be expected anyway if the legislature of New Hampshire was correct in revealing recently that the federal government is nothing but a corporation which operates with a fraudulent constitution. Voting elected officials out of office isn’t necessarily a solution, either, when one thing that allows them to keep running for another term (usually for a bad reason) is a lack of term limits.
So as a social institution, the government is necessary but untrustworthy, mainly because those directly involved in its work from elected or appointed offices have agendas of their own, and are inclined to act out of selfish human nature. The ones they represent may not be above doing that either, but it just goes to show that being a politician isn’t the best idea for a career if you want to keep a clear conscience.
