Toward the end of his 2012 State of the Union speech, President Obama said “I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: that government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” But the huge gap between those limited government words and the Obama administration’s expansive government actions gave the lie to the words.
Now with Obama’s vice president about to be president, bringing with him a multitrillion dollar cornucopia of further government expansion commitments, it appears that any such limited government words we might hear (like Biden’s promise to govern in the interests of all Americans) will again represent cognitive dissonance rather than commitment to principle.
In fact, we already have important guidance as to how limited government words will be evaded by those who don’t believe what they say. Just over half a century ago, in his Let Freedom Reign, Leonard Read wrote about the loophole in the limited government formulation that will allow President Biden, like President Obama before him, to evade any such limitation. His depressingly current chapter on “Governmental Discipline” merits careful consideration.
- During the last century, several of the best American academicians and statesmen—in an effort to prescribe a theory of governmental limitation—have agreed: The government should do only those things which private citizens cannot do for themselves, or which they cannot do so well for themselves.
- This is meant to be a precise theory of limitation.
- The government should, indeed, do some of the things which private citizens cannot do for themselves….Codifying and enforcing an observation of the taboos gives the citizenry a common body of rules which permits the game to go on; this is what a formal agency of society can do for the citizens that they cannot, one by one, do for themselves….And no more!
- This proposal…does not go far enough. It has a loophole, a “leak,” through which an authoritarian can wiggle.
- What they [citizens] will not do and, therefore, “cannot” do for themselves is to implement all the utopian schemes that enter the minds of men, things that such schemers think the citizens ought to do but which the citizens do not want to do…”only” is utterly meaningless!
- Reflect on the veritable flood of taboos—against other than destructive actions—now imposed on the citizenry by federal, state, and local governments. And all in the name of doing for the people what they “cannot” do for themselves. In reality, this means doing for them what they do not wish to do for themselves.
- How might we state this idea, then, in a way that…if followed, would restore government to its principled, limited role—keep it within bounds? Consider this: The government should do only those things, in defense of life and property, which things private citizens cannot properly do each man for himself.
- The only things private citizens cannot properly do for themselves is to codify all destructive actions and prohibit them….Neither the individual citizen nor any number of them in private combination…can property write and enforce the law. This is a job for government; and it means that the sole function of a government is to maintain law and order, that is, to keep the peace…a task much neglected when government steps out of bounds.
- All else—an infinity of unimaginable activities—is properly within the realm of personal choice: individuals acting cooperatively, competitively, voluntarily, privately, as they freely choose. In a nutshell, this amended proposal charges government with the responsibility to inhibit destructive actions—its sole competency—with private citizens acting creatively in any way they please.
- The government is engaged in countless out of bounds activities…what private citizens will not do rather than something they cannot do.
- We allow government to commandeer resources that private citizens will not voluntarily commit to such purposes. In other words, private citizens are forced to do things they do not wish to do.
- Why are private citizens forced to do what they do not wish to do? After all, the formal coercive agency of society—is their agency!
- We have one test, and one only, for what private citizens really wish to do: those things they will do voluntarily!
- But here’s the rub: There are those who believe we…are unaware of what is good for us. These “needs” invented for us…have no manner of implementation except by coercion. In a word, these people who would be our gods can achieve the ends they have in mind for us only as they gain control of our agency of force: government.
- And the primary reason why they can force upon us those things we do not want is our lack of attention to what are the proper bounds of government.
By asserting devotion to limited government principles, politicians try to blunt recognition of how blatantly such words are untrue. Mouthing the same words as those truly concerned about limiting government overreach allows them to disguise the chasm between their words and their actions. But such efforts remind me of some other words of Abraham Lincoln that we would be well advised to heed:
We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different but incompatible things.
