Government And The Infraction Of Liberty, Part 18 to blupete's Essay
"An Essay On Government"
As we have seen, in our analysis, the reason people band together under government is so that they will not be abused, harmed, injured and/or plundered of their goods by those people, marauders, either from within or without the country, who would run amok without the threat of government force to keep them in check. Government, according to John Locke, will lose its right to exercise its power, however, when government abuses its people worse than any imaginable group of marauders that might be operating in the absence of a government. (At least without government, a person might take steps to deal with marauders, steps a person might not take when of the mistaken view that their interests were being protected by government.) Further, in Lockian theory, if government abuses the exercise of the power given it by the people, why then, the people have a natural right to rebel, as did the people of New England in 1776. A legitimate government, for its continued existence must limit itself to those matters that are common to all the members within the community, and only those matters: for example, matters such as civil and national defence. I fear, that here in Canada, government, on a regular basis now, involves itself in matters that are not common to all the members; but, rather, to particular groups, officially pitting one against the other and justifying their acts of plunder in the name of "social justice," a most ambiguous and obscure expression.
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