Contradiction in terms: There’s no such thing as ‘limited government’

Conservatives keep telling us they want “limited government.” When you think about their positions, you might think they just don’t understand limited government. There’s a more serious problem, though. “Limited government” is a mythical beast that can’t exist.

Take this tweet from Rick Santorum last week. It sounds very appealing to those of us who love individual freedom. A libertarian or anarcho-capitalist could have said this. But think about the rest of what Santorum favors and you quickly realize he doesn’t mean what these words say.

If Santorum and other conservatives believe that government can’t force us to pay for things that violate our beliefs, does this mean he’s going to fight to get refunds for those of us who’ve had to pay for wars against our will? Is he going to try to get us refunds for the money that’s been taken from us to give to other countries in the form of handouts and military hardware? Is he going to prevent our money from being used to support various kinds of social and economic welfare programs that we don’t believe in?

“Government” is force, whether it’s open or hidden. By definition, if a government can’t force you to do anything, it’s not a government. It’s just somebody making suggestions. The real question is whether any kind of government has any moral right to initiate force against anyone.

For people who believe in limited government, it seems simple. They say that government can use force against anyone — only in limited circumstances. But who’s to decide which circumstances? Santorum thinks it’s immoral to require people to pay for contraception that violates their beliefs. I agree. Someone on the progressive left might say that it’s immoral to require people to pay for wars that violate their beliefs. I would agree with that, too. But Santorum thinks you should be required to pay for his wars. The leftist thinks you should be required to pay for the social services he wants to provide.

So who decides? The majority? That brings up all sorts of different issues. What if a majority elect people they agree with on certain big issues, but aren’t in agreement on “smaller” issues? Does that mean it’s OK for a minority to get their way on those “smaller” issues, just because they’re not important to enough people to swing elections? And even if the majority agree on everything — which isn’t possible, of course — what gives that majority the right to impose their will on the minority?

Isn’t this just setting the stage for a constant war of all against all?

Limited government is an illusion. If you’re going to favor some form of the coercive state, you have to admit that you favor a dictatorship with a monopoly on power. You might have certain preferences about how the power is exercised, but once you put the beast into place, your preferences don’t matter to it one bit.

There’s a quote frequently attributed to Thomas Jefferson that says, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.” It’s a popular line with those who favor limited government, because they say it shows why government has to be small and limited. But Jefferson didn’t actually say or write the words. And the truth is that any government that’s given a monopoly on power — for any limited purpose — is eventually going to take whatever it wants.

Even though Jefferson didn’t say those words, we can say that he worked hard to set up a limited government. The beast that rules over us today is proof of exactly what happens to “limited government” over time. The world has never seen limited government. It never will.

People frequently tell me that they’re afraid of the competitive governance model, because they’re afraid it won’t work. I think they’re mistaken — for reasons that I’ve spent years thinking through — but I can’t prove it to them. The only thing I can prove is that they’re oddly willing to bet on something that’s always proven to fail over something that’s never been tried. That sounds pretty strange to me.