IT ISN’T THE purview of government to keep me from smoking cigarettes or eating fattening foods. Nor is it the responsibility of government to give me a job, an education or health care. While I’m confident that things could be “better” in this country, it can’t (and shouldn’t) be government controls that make it so.
Our society is founded on the principles of a government of laws, not of men. And although we’ve come to expect elected officials to push their agendas, the truth is that America isn’t clay to be molded by whoever is in office at the time. The Constitution is a document that limits the power of government. We all want the world to be a happier place, but the reality is that the government’s responsibility is rather narrow: to protect individual rights.
Yet over the decades, the role of government has gradually been shifted from protecting our rights to defining them. The law has now become the product of institutionalized mob rule. And because we’ve allowed some individual rights to be compromised, now they’re all up for grabs. Most people have come to expect that the government can do whatever it wants.
A prime example can be found in the way hedge funds are treated in this country. We last wrote about hedge funds a few years back. In recent weeks, the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an investigation that’s almost sure to end in new regulatory constraints. And although as Americans our liberties aren’t to be limited by the government, but protected under them, even the existing hedge-fund regulation demonstrates how easily rights can be compromised by the whims of nonelected regulators who claim to serve the “public good.” (more…)
