I am a liberal and a (small “r”) republican. This means I believe that (a) rights—such as conscience, speech, writing, assembly, association, privacy, due process, self-defense, and property—derive from nature and therefore inhere in each of us, and (b) constitutional government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. The People are sovereign both individually and collectively, not just nominally, but practically. I consider myself very fortunate to live in a country founded on these principles. Yet I am confronted by the reality that we are not living up to the principles our founders and the generations that followed bequeathed to us.
The central question confronting the founders of this country was how to reconcile the tension between individual rights and democracy, or the popular will. To address this, they established a constitutional republic with a bill of rights applicable to all people residing within the nation, the scope of which is determined by judicial review. This rights framework enables democracy while avoiding the problem of majoritarianism, or the tyranny of the majority. Meanwhile, representative government mitigates the risk of the tyranny of the minority. In practice, then, the state must have the power to secure our rights while simultaneously being limited in a way that preserves the integrity of those rights, thereby checking both the popular will and the tyranny of the minority.
I sometimes use this analogy: according to the Bible, the devil only has the power that God grants him; God allows Satan authority in the world, but Satan’s power is limited. In this analogy, Satan represents the government, while the sovereign represents God. Under the ancien régime, the sovereign was the king; in a totalitarian society, the sovereign is the state; in a constitutional republic, the sovereign is the people—both collectively and individually. Another way to conceptualize this is through the analogy of parental authority: under absolutism and totalitarianism, the king or the state respectively acts as the parent, while in a constitutional republic, the people assume this role. Once I become an adult, I am my own parent.
Put simply, certain liberties cannot be stripped from individuals simply because the majority seeks to impose conformity with the popular will. Nor should a minority of the wealthy and powerful be allowed to impose its will on the people. Thus, both forms of tyranny are in principle checked. However, with the rise of the corporate state and the technocratic apparatus, this balance—always delicate—has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Indeed, in many ways, our society has become unbalanced.
I have written extensively on the problems of the corporate state and technocracy, but there is another issue at hand, one that is not disconnected from those problems. This is the demand that government should provide for the needs of its people. Meeting this demand carries inherent risks. When the government assumes responsibility for people’s well-being, they become dependent upon it. Consequently, their loyalty shifts away from themselves as autonomous individuals and their fellow citizens and toward the state—and the party that controls the state or that part of it that governs the dependent. The state, in effect, becomes the parent, and those dependent upon it become its children.
Dependence on government thus grants it power over the individual, compromising the integrity of our rights, and because we are a people, not just those who are directly dependent upon it. Just as children do not possess the same rights as their parents, a dependent populace is subject to restrictions on conscience, speech, association, privacy, defense of self and others, and other natural rights. Dependence on government compels all citizens—since this is a representative system—to accept obligations they did not voluntarily assume, potentially hindering their own prosperity and the rewards of responsible decision-making for themselves, their families, and their communities.
At the same time, structural conditions exist that are not the result of poor individual decision-making but rather the inevitable concentration of wealth and power in the hands of those who control the nation’s political economy. This is after all, a capitalist society, the deleterious conditions of which are made worse with the rise of corporate power. Without access to legitimate means of self-sufficiency, some individuals will experience material deprivation, and some will resort to illegitimate means to satisfy their needs and desires. Thus, public safety necessitates government intervention, which inevitably places burdens on others. This burden goes beyond the criminal justice response but in addressing the criminogenic conditions that make that response necessary.
For much of my life, I voted for Democratic candidates, believing that their policies best aligned with the principles of individual rights and equal opportunity while addressing the deprivation problem. However, as the party increasingly embraced a vision of expansive government intervention, and with this intervention compromising our rights and liberties, I found myself questioning whether this shift was compatible with the foundational principles of classical liberalism and republicanism. This growing intrusiveness occurred while I was gaining a greater appreciation for the founding principles. As government grew more intrusive, as it intruded upon my freedoms of conscience, speech, writing, privacy, etc., the risk of state dependency and the erosion of personal autonomy became too great to ignore. A pound of flesh was being extracted, and that pound of flesh was the rights and liberties to which I am entitled as a human being.
At the same time, the Republican Party, through its populist transformation, has returned in many ways to its roots as the Party of Lincoln—championing individual liberty, economic self-sufficiency, and the sovereignty of the people over an overreaching state. This evolution has drawn me toward the Republican side, not out of blind partisan loyalty, but because its current trajectory aligns more closely with the principles I have always held dear and now hold dearer. If we are to preserve a constitutional republic that empowers individuals rather than diminishes them, we must support policies and leaders who prioritize liberty over dependency and self-governance over bureaucratic control.
The challenge remains to reconcile the necessity of government action with the imperative of maintaining individual autonomy. If the state is too weak, it cannot create the conditions necessary for the meaningful exercise of rights. If the state is too powerful, it risks becoming the parent, rendering citizens dependent rather than self-governing. The solution is not to reject government intervention outright but to ensure that any intervention preserves the sovereignty of both the individual and the people. This requires designing institutions and policies that empower individuals rather than enfeeble them, fostering conditions in which people can provide for themselves rather than becoming wards of the state. It also necessitates resisting both the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of concentrated wealth and power, recognizing that each presents a distinct but related threat to republican liberty.
Ultimately, a free people must resist the temptation to trade autonomy for security, even when government action is necessary. The strength of a constitutional republic lies in its ability to mediate these tensions without eroding the principles that sustain it. The goal must always be to ensure that government serves the people, not that the people serve the government. The moment the latter occurs, sovereignty is lost, and the republic risks becoming something else entirely. Not all our problems can be solved by government. At the risk of being accused of being a Reaganite, many times government is the problem.
freedom and reason 