So What’s Limited Gov’t
I think I share the guilt of many, in that I say I believe in things or advocate principles that I haven’t taken the time to really understand. That’s not to say that my following or advocacy of those principles has been completely blind. It’s more along the lines of “I know enough to be dangerous.”
One of those principles is Limited Government.
Recently I have been reading the book “On Ordered Liberty,” written by Samuel Gregg. It’s a bit of a tedious read and at times very hard to push through even though the book itself is only little more than 100 pages.
That being said, I think nestled in between many hard to understand sentences I feel like I’ve finally found some ways to articulate what the principle of Limited Government really means.
So here’s my one liner: Limited Government is a “set of defined, publicly acknowledged and consistently applied coercive rules” that create “spheres of personal freedom within which one can act without being arbitrarily subjected to another’s will.”
Perhaps a crude parallel is the example of flying a kite. The string of the kite is limited government. The kite is the individual. Without the a strong but flexible string (a limited form of government), the kite cannot fly and thus reach its full potential. However, if the kite string is too weak (anarchy) the pull of the wind of freedom instead of lifting the kite in the air will snap the string and the kite will lose all the benefit of freedom’s wind. On the other hand if the string is too thick and heavy (socialism, facisim, communism, etc.), it looses flexibility and drags the kite down, because the wind of freedom can not support the weight of the string.
Does this definition work for you? Or would you add or subtract something?
