A government is a necessary evil. It's unfortunate that in today's society that "evil" part is true. You'd think after centuries of kings, dictators, and tyrants, the free world would know better. I guess old habits die hard.
In a true free society government has one purpose: to serve and protect the people. If this service is removed, we can no longer claim true freedom for the people.
There must be limits placed on the government to keep freedom for the masses. If limits and checks aren't in place, the people suffer, while the government grows fat and with brown noses.
To maintain a true free government, where those governing are servants, the government should have fund and maintain only a handful of things:
1. Education
2. Internal safety
3. Defense against external forces.
That is it. No joke. A true free government should do just those three things. So that means they should maintain and fund schools, teachers, emergency services, police, hospitals, borders, and the military. The taxes should never move into anything else. Once the government gets their fingers into other areas of society, freedom diminishes.
But how can everything else in society run without a government telling us what to do? Well, the point of freedom is to think and act on your own. To be industrious, inventive. If the government is funding schools and allowing teachers to think and educated the way they need for their students, people will get smarter, and their creativity will flourish. How often do you hear about genius' who were removed because they didn't "fit the mold?" How often were they failed because they couldn't sit regulated exams? Too often. That is evidence of politics getting too involved.
The government has set itself up as a glorified babysitter. It watches everything we do and tells us how it should be done. Instead of helping the poor learn how to break their poverty cycle, they give them hand outs until they become lazy and teach their children the same poor life skills, while on the flip side, the wealthy and entrepreneurial are taxed heavily, and the poor are taught to scorn them. This is all backward. If the government pulled their hands out of it, the well off can contribute more to charities and create jobs for those in need of work though investments and business building.
(Yeah, these are all generalizations, but generalizations are there because they're generally true.)
I also hear about separation of the government and church. Well, yeah, they should be separate, but the problem is, the government, again, is digging its grubby fingers into matters that are traditionally--and rightfully so--jurisdiction of the church, or religion in general. Religion is used as a moral compass, no matter which faith you belong to, and since most of the western world is founded on Christian values, those morals naturally fall along those lines. To say the government needs to intervene to stop religion from doing what it's supposed to do it wrong, because it's demanding the government overstep its bounds for maintaining true freedom.
Also, politicians should be paid last. Right now, they are being paid like kings, so they continue to brown nose, lie, manipulate, and get involve in matters they shouldn't to keep the whiny, loudest groups happy so they can keep their money and power. They are public servants. Maybe if they were paid like servants, and paid last, they might start beating a different drum.
Freedom is dying as the governments gain more and more control over smaller and smaller things. And honestly, from where I'm standing, no one is stopping it.
