Nearly all sovereign or federal governments hate freedom, but they won’t admit it. This is true in spades if the government is dictatorial, communist, socialist, or a tin-horn banana republic. It’s even true in most democratic governments, where the hate spews primarily from the political left. This is because the left seeks to weaponize government for its own purposes.
The fact that government is the enemy of freedom doesn’t ‘sound’ true at first blush. But looking under the hood, there are sound reasons why freedom and government are enemies. From the government’s perspective, it always wants the power to control the behavior of the populace by passing laws and ordinances. History reveals that governments become jealous of that power and labor hard to increase it.
Governments want that authority and control because they need it to maintain obedience and to impose the rule of their laws, sometimes enacted by the dictatorial power of one man. Extreme examples of the “rule of man” are Germany’s Hitler, Russia’s Stalin, and China’s Mao. The politicians of leftist governments use fear to control you and the populace because a fearful citizenry can more easily be controlled. Governing with fear gives leftists more power over our lives.
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To be fair, there is a difference between “legitimate government” and “The State.” Legitimate government is born, including a lawfully-written constitution and citizen rights, voted into existence by “the people,” and includes a structure where citizens consent to direct democracy or a republic that delegates decision-making to leaders selected by citizens. “The State” is an authoritarian government that honors the Rule of Law only when it’s convenient and, in its place, imposes the Rule of Man. The Rule of Man often begets despotic men, conquering warlords, or the military, and it depletes social power.
Even here in our U.S. republic, government, and freedom are consistently at odds. The federal government establishes laws, systems, and regulations that protect itself while publicly claiming to safeguard individual rights and civil liberties. Governments can restrict individual freedoms through various mechanisms. Along with some of the states, governments sometimes fail to enforce the Rule of Law. Prosecutors pick and choose which laws to enforce and which ones to ignore, especially now in the areas of border security, looting, store theft, and misdemeanor crimes.
Extensive government control over business operations and the property rights of businesses limit the freedom of businesses to grow and use their property for what they want to use it for.
Governments can wipe out the profits of businesses and fill their money coffers by levying huge fines or demanding that companies be broken apart, such as it did by decreeing AT&T to divest the entire Bell telephone system.
Governments often manipulate the press to become their allies and print or broadcast what government wants them to (or doesn’t want them to) and to support the “government line.” Governments can restrict access to information, play favorites with the press and leak information to their favorites, limit public discourse, and refuse to prosecute their favorites. When the government can control speech and information, it can control thought, which can turn into controlling the minds of citizens. The expansion of state control, whether by seizure, fines, “suasion influence,” taxes, gifts, or changing the law, increases state power and leaves society, families, and businesses with less power.
The federal government spies on people as if they have no right to privacy, tapping phones, using surveillance drones, detaining citizens indefinitely, and trespassing with no court order. These restrict a citizen’s right to be free from government surveillance.
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Our government routinely engages in taxation without representation, with the business community as the victims, confiscating tax money from businesses, which are prohibited from voting for elected officials– no representation.
The Feds have adopted laws that make criminals of Americans who are exercising freedoms to hold religious studies at home, grow vegetables in their yards, not wear masks, attend churches, and collect rainwater. The judicial system, in particular, can influence freedoms by allowing unfair or biased legal proceedings or by allowing government agencies to be prosecutors, judges, and juries.
Finally, one of the government’s jobs is to regulate, but too often, they choose to power up a notch—not just to regulate, but to dictate. That shatters freedom.
In short, when government becomes authoritarian, undemocratic, takes rights away from citizens, creates new powers for itself, and shrinks from enforcing the Rule of Law, it can indeed become a threat to freedom. We have too much of that going on in today’s world.
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