{"id":26936,"date":"2015-07-16T01:00:09","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T05:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26936"},"modified":"2025-05-21T09:16:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T13:16:21","slug":"qotd-the-proper-role-of-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/07\/16\/qotd-the-proper-role-of-government\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The proper role of government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good government is a constable \u2014 it keeps the peace and protects property. Parasitic government \u2014 which is, sad to say, practically the only form known in the modern world \u2014 is at its best a middleman that takes a cut of every transaction by positioning itself as a nuisance separating you from your goals. At its worst, it is functionally identical to a goon running a protection racket.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The desire to be left alone is a powerful one, and an American one. It is not, contrary to the rhetoric proffered by the off-brand Cherokee princess currently representing the masochistic masses of Massachusetts in the Senate, an anti-social sentiment. It is not that we necessarily desire to be left alone full stop \u2014 it is that we desire to be left alone by people who intend to forcibly seize our assets for their own use. You need not be a radical to desire to live in your own home, to drive your own car, and to perform your own work without having to beg the permission of a politician \u2014 and pay them 40 percent for the privilege.<\/p>\n

Principles are dangerous things \u2014 whiskey is for drinking, water and principles are for fighting over. The anti-ideological current in conservative thinking appreciates this: If we all seek complete and comprehensive satisfaction of our principles, then there will never be peace. This is why scale matters and why priorities matter. In a world in which the public sector consumes 5 percent of my income and uses it for such legitimate public goods as law enforcement and border security, I do not much care whether the tax system is fair or just on a theoretical level; and while I may resent it as a matter of principle, the cost of my consent is relatively low, and I have other things to think about. But in a world in which the parasites take half<\/em>, and use it mainly to buy political support from an increasingly ovine and dependent electorate, then I care intensely.<\/p>\n

Kevin D. Williamson, “Property and Peace”, National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2014-07-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good government is a constable \u2014 it keeps the peace and protects property. Parasitic government \u2014 which is, sad to say, practically the only form known in the modern world \u2014 is at its best a middleman that takes a cut of every transaction by positioning itself as a nuisance separating you from your goals. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,10,41,13],"tags":[363,154,1595,118],"class_list":["post-26936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-corruption","tag-privacy","tag-publicgoods","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-70s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26937,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26936\/revisions\/26937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}