As with anything, I feel there should be limits to government. The American Revolution was spurred in part by the desire to limit the power of the British government to tax American colonists. Americans have long believed that government serves its citizens, not the other way around. To ensure that citizens are the masters of government, not its slaves, we recognize the need to place limits on government from time to time, to protect ourselves from an overzealous government. Some of the states, through Legislatures or citizen initiatives, have adopted limits on the government's power to tax and spend, and on the number of terms elected officials may serve.
The Tenth Amendment clearly states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." . This is probably the most ignored part of the entire Constitution. The meaning has been lost to many currently in power, yet is so simple; the federal government only has the power it is specifically given in the Constitution. Unless the Constitution gives the federal government the power to do something, it doesn’t have that power. This system was set up by the founders precisely to give autonomy to the state and local governments, with minimal power to the federal government. The federal government serves an important purpose, and that’s why powers are delegated to the federal government in the Constitution. However, the power that was delegated to the federal government was minimal. Current politicians have chosen to completely ignore this amendment, and give a completely illiterate reading of the necessary and proper clause of the Constitution.
In order to say that government can be good is to understand that in order for this to work; government must help their people in a positive way by helping with certain tasks and stay away from other tasks. Government’s task was set to standards by administering judgment according to standards of justice. When government starts having more political power, it has made people very uncomfortable knowing that it can change the course of state government. In our current administration many feel that it is taking on way to many issues, and big issues at that.
As a further safeguard for the people's rights, The Framers and Ratifiers of the Constitution provided for division of powers not only between the Federal and State governments but also within the Federal government between its three, separate Branches and, further, specified various checks and balances among these Branches, to help prevent either usurpation of power (grasping unauthorized power) or misuse of the limited quantity of power granted to it by the people: as explained, for instance, by Madison in The Federalist number 51.
Each of the Branches was designed to help restrain the other Branches from any violation of the Constitution.
As we look at Locke’s perspective on The Second Treatise of Government, Locke saw this legislative government the most important. The limits to the power of the legislature include the following: the legislation must govern by fixed "promulgated established laws" that apply equally to everyone; these laws must be designed solely for the good of the people; and the legislative must not raise taxes on the property of the people without the people's consent. As we see, Locke had faith in human rationality, but he was also knowledgeable enough to know about people's natural appetites. If a legislative is put in the position where it can legislate for its own benefit, Locke believes that it may well succumb to that temptation.
It has been always been the thought of our founding fathers, that there was one main reason to keep government in check. As we look at our Constitution, we realize again that they may not have had a crystal ball to see the future, but they had the good morals and principals to see human nature. The federal government, of course, does not at present respect its constitutional limits. The chief culprit, in this regard, is the massive social legislation and regulatory apparatus enacted under Congress’s constitutional authority as Article 1, Section 8, Clause states, “to regulate Commerce . . . among the several states” .
That clause, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, has been the source of constitutional authority for the great expansion of federal control over health, morals, education, crime, labor, environmental conditions, and retirement and unemployment insurance programs. Does this seem to you why the Constitution was written for? To keep the government from going overboard on everything they touch? I believe it was. I look at all they have gotten involved with and there seems to be many areas they should have stayed out of. Limited constitutional government results from an understanding that the ends of government are limited, and so must be the power and scope of government. The ends of government must be rooted in something fixed outside human will and desire.
For Abraham Lincoln no less than the Founders, the purposes of government are derived from unchanging human nature, namely the protection of individual natural rights. Unlimited government, on the other hand, results when the infinite number of human desires, from jobs with vacations, to free medicine, to abortions-on-demand, to after school programs for kids, are treated as the ends of government. The only kind of government that can deliver an infinite number of things is a government of unlimited power and scope. This has been the goal of modern liberalism and socialism in America for the past century.
These examples are just some of the reasons I feel limited government is the only answer.
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