The Role of the Federal Government?

The preamble The Constitution of the United States of America:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.



Few Americans would argue about the need for our government to provide for the common defense and there are standards of justice that need to be established by the U.S. Government. Promoting of the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty is an area of dispute among those who see the government as either a necessary evil or the answer to all of America's problems.

There are those who believe that rights are derived from God and others who believe they are disseminated from the government. If they are given to us from the government, I would worry because of the quixotic nature demonstrated by even the most stable of governing bodies. I would not want anyone fallible deciding what is right for me to do or not do. And is not all mankind fallible? I believe that rights come from an infallible God and it is the government's role to protect those rights and "promote the general welfare" of individuals by insuring that their rights are not unjustly taken from them.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are there to guarantee all citizens the opportunity to pursue happiness, prosperity, and a full and successful life. It is the opportunity that is to be protected, not the outcome. You have the right to fail. It is not the government's role to save you from bad decisions or unseen circumstances. That is where faith in God and charity come into play.

No one should be protected from failure. In fact, the vast majority of people who are successful have failed several times and have learned from there failures. This current trend to save businesses from failure by government intervention is an attempt to turn our government into a socialist entity. This is dangerous and it will drag our country into an abyss from which we may not recover. There are several reasons that socialism does not work. One reason is the inefficiencies a government ensues partly because governments don't run on a profit motive. They don't have to make a profit to survive; they simply raise taxes or print more money. Raising taxes past a certain point diminishes returns and stunts growth in the private sector. The reason for this is human nature. People work for themselves and their families; businesses do not put money at risk just to have it taken from them by an ever greedy government. Printing too much money devalues the dollar and creates hyper-inflation.

Who is best at spending your money; you or the government? The next time you hear that something is too big to fail or that congress should spend our money to save someone, ask yourself if it is worth the price.