The Proper Role of Government

Each person survives and flourishes based on their ability to exercise and use their reason. For this to happen, each person must have the protection of individual rights. The whole society will flourish to the degree that rights are protected and individuals are free.

The word proper is used here to mean with man's life as the standard of evaluation. A proper government must be proper for all those governed. A society is beneficial to each member to the extent that they are free (their right are upheld.) With the government being the immediate guardian of freedom for a society, individuals will either immigrate to or flee from that society based on the freedoms protected by the government.

A proper government, a government which is designed to allow man to live his life to the fullest according to his nature (as a rational being), is a government which upholds individual rights and does not itself violate them in any way. The name of that political system is Capitalism.


Copyright © 2001 by Jeff Landauer and Joseph Rowlands