When people are asked the question as to what the purpose of government actually is, there are going to be various answers -- such as, for example, the general defense of the nation, the general welfare of the people, or the law and order necessary to have equal justice for all, and so on. One answer, which is not heard nearly enough, is that the true purpose of legitimate government ought to be to protect our individual liberty, above all. In other words, the purpose of government ought to first and foremost be about securing our liberty to be about our business and therefore thus providing us with the best opportunity to have a good life, with liberty, and to freely pursue that which brings satisfaction to us.
Regrettably when we look at governments the world over and in particular our own government, it has to be admitted that the governance of this nation does not appear to be about protecting our rights, but rather seems to be about taking our natural rights as well as our Constitutional rights, and circumscribing them to something less than what they are supposed to be. While there are myriad excuses why governments have a strong tendency to do this sort of thing, the bottom line is that power in the hands of the wrong or misguided people in addition to fallible institutions leads often to the result that the people that should be sovereign, are reduced to being something more akin to subjects, which are supposed to therefore obey their government, for their own supposed protection and safety.
The fact that we don’t hear often enough from our politicians or from those that are in the catbird seats of power, that their objective is to defend and to assure the people, that our individual liberty comes first, is proof positive that this isn’t on their agenda, and clearly isn’t part of their thinking. Instead, we are sold a bogus bill of goods from our government, that insists that the people need to forget about all this liberty stuff, and concentrate more on understanding that this world is dangerous and that rights so granted, even of an unalienable nature are subject to being modified as the government best sees fit to do per its inclination and that as a people we ought to just go along with this.
So then, to live under a government in which the reality is that our liberty and our unalienable rights are subject to the dictates of that government, is to live under conditions in which we are not truly free. In the best of those cases, though, we sacrifice some of our liberties, for the protection that the state provides us, though even that protection involves the citizens themselves having to defend the nation from enemies within as well as enemies without, as defined by that government.
All of the above reflects that when we examine our own government, that to believe that its top priority is to backstop our liberty and our freedom of expression and thought, is clearly something that not only isn’t a priority but seems to be something that this government does not desire to have in effect, because it wants to be in control, which conflicts with our natural rights to liberty.