day no. 16,094: let us now try liberty!

"Let Us Now Try Liberty. God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Negative rights are those given to us directly by God. They originate in Him and are upheld and secured directly by Him. Thus nothing is required of anyone else in order to bring them into existence or guarantee their persistence.

Governments are created by free men to secure freedoms they already have. Liberty precedes limited government. Governments do not give men anything. They exist to ensure men are guaranteed to keep what they already have. So, governments themselves are subsequent to God-given rights. In other words, governments exists only because rights already do.

Big government is faith in human ingenuity. Mind you, it is only faith by a few in a few for the sake of what they imagine to be a large, unruly, undisciplined population. They presume most people won't do the right thing so it's their rare duty to force them to do what they ought. Now this presumption isn't wrong, but it is only right by half. The legislators fail to count themselves among those who don't know what's best for them and thus presume a divine ability to be different than all other people. They are self-proclaimed demi-gods and thus have the approval of their own consciences when they treat other people like machines to be tweaked instead of souls to be respected.

Government God's way requires faith. It requires government to limit itself because its God is unlimited. It requires men to be free because in Christ they are bound. It requires everyone to resist the urge to insist that the world would be a better place if they were in charge. It wouldn't and they never will be. God rules and reigns and has it under control. Faith is required to live in that reality.

Galatians 5:1

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.