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Thus the government’s function was changed from
the role of ruler to the role of servant. The government was set to protect man from criminals—and the Constitution
was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but
against the government—as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
The source of the government’s authority is “the consent
of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means
that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.
The proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories, all of them involving the issues of physical
force and the protection of men’s rights:
 1. Police, to protect men from criminals Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only
by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing
his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.
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Criminals
are a small minority in any semi-civilized society. But the protection and enforcement of contracts through courts of civil
law is the most crucial need of a peaceful society; without such protection, no civilization could be developed or maintained.
 2. Armed Services, to protect men from
foreign invaders The necessary consequence of
man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and
only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory
use of physical force a moral imperative.
If
some “pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the
first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil,
it would encourage and reward it.
If a society
provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress,
to shoot any strangers approaching his door—or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed
for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute
force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistoric savages.
 3. Law courts, to settle disputes among
men according to objective laws. In a free
society, men are not forced to deal with one another. They do so only by voluntary agreement and, when a time element is involved,
by contract. If a contract is broken by the arbitrary decision of one man, it may cause a disastrous financial injury to the
other—and the victim would have no recourse except to seize the offender’s property as compensation. But here
again, the use of force cannot be left to the decision of private individuals. And this leads to one of the most important
and most complex functions of the government: to the function of an arbiter who settles disputes among men according to objective
laws. A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect
use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then
refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right—i.e., keeping them
without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values
without their owner’s consent, under false pretenses or false promises. Extortion is another variant of an indirect
use of force: it consists of obtaining material values, not in exchange for values, but by the threat of force, violence or
injury. Some of these actions are obviously criminal.
Others, such as a unilateral breach of contract, may not be criminally motivated, but may be caused by irresponsibility and
irrationality. Still others may be complex issues with some claim to justice on both sides. But whatever the case may be,
all such issues have to be made subject to objectively defined laws and have to be resolved by an impartial arbiter, administering
the laws, i.e., by a judge (and a jury, when appropriate).
 Founding Fathers of the American Revolution. In mankind’s history, the understanding of the government’s proper
function is a very recent achievement: it is only two hundred years old and it dates from the Founding Fathers of the American
Revolution. Not only did they identify the nature and the needs of a free society, but they devised the means to translate
it into practice. A free society—like any other human product—cannot be achieved by random means, by mere wishing
or by the leaders’ “good intentions.” A complex legal system, based on objectively valid principles, is
required to make a society free and to keep it free-a system that does not depend on the motives, the moral character or the
intentions of any given official, a system that leaves no opportunity, no legal loophole for the development of tyranny.
The American system of checks and balances was just such an achievement.
And although certain contradictions in the Constitution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism, the incomparable achievement
was the concept of a constitution as a means of limiting and restricting the power of the government.
Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point,
it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that
it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter
for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.
Today, this principle is forgotten, ignored and evaded. The result
is the present state of the world, with mankind’s retrogression to the lawlessness of absolutist tyranny, to the primitive
savagery of rule by brute force.
Now consider the extent of the moral and political inversion in
today’s prevalent view of government. Instead of being a protector of man’s rights, the government is becoming
their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting
men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue
it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly,
subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of nonobjective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions
of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of
unlimited whim—so that we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is
free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of
human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
One also begins to see more clearly the nature of the political principles
that have to be accepted and advocated, as part of the battle for man’s intellectual Renaissance.
Countdown to "We the People Judgment Day
II" The sequel, 'Return of the Patriots' November 6, 2012
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