What is the Purpose of Government?
By Dr. David Glesne
President, The Virtues Campus
Might the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution shed light on a better way forward?
History does not change. It is always there for us to look at if we want. It is silly only to look at the future. The future is obscure. The present is fleeting. Where have we been? How did we get to where we are? What if there is something great to learn from the past?
The Colonial Period: Early 1600s - 1760
During the Colonial Period, the Bible’s impact on the shaping of America’s two main pillar documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was decisive. It is noteworthy, if not extraordinary, that the British blamed the Black Regiment for America’s Independence and government. The Black Robed Regiment, a backhanded reference to the black robes they wore, was the way the British referred to the courageous and patriotic American clergy during the Founding Era.
Before 1763 there was not a right asserted in the Declaration of Independence which had not been debated and discussed by the New England Clergy. (Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution). It is strange to modern ears to hear that the rights listed in the Declaration of Independence were but the listing of sermon topics that had been preached from the pulpit in the two decades leading up to the American Revolution. But it was not just the British. Our own leaders rejoiced that the pulpits thundered in the awakening and revival of American principles and feelings that led to American Independence (John Adams, The Works of John Adams).
As laudable as the Black Robed Regiment was during the Revolutionary period, however, they were not necessarily unique. They were continuing what clergy with Bible in hand had been doing to shape American government and culture in the 150 years before the Revolution. Examples are numerous.
The early settlers who arrived in Virginia beginning in 1606 included ministers who in 1619 were instrumental in helping form America’s first representative government: the Virginia House of Burgesses, with its members elected from among the people. Meeting in the Jamestown church, the first movement toward democracy was inaugurated with the blessing of the ministers of God.
In 1620, the Pilgrims established their colony in Massachusetts. Their pastor, John Robinson, charged them to elect civil leaders who would not only seek the “common good” but also, in a radical departure from practice in the rest of the world, eliminate special privileges and status between governors and the governed. The Pilgrims followed by organizing a representative government and holding annual elections. By 1636, they enacted America’s first Bill of Rights.
In 1630, the Puritans arrived and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Under the leadership of their clergy, they too, established representative government with annual elections and by 1641, a document of individual rights, the “Body of Liberties”. In 1636, Rev. Roger Williams established the Rhode Island Colony and its representative form of government, explaining that the sovereign, original, and foundation of civil power lies in the people.
In 1636, the Rev. Thomas Hooker and other clergy founded Connecticut. Two years later, in a sermon based on Deuteronomy 1:13 and Exodus 18:21, he explained the three Biblical principles that had guided the plan of government in Connecticut: 1) The choice of public magistrates belongs to the people by God’s own allowance, 2) The privilege of election … belongs to the people … and 3) They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates [i.e. the people], it is in their power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place (Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic). From Hooker’s teachings and leadership sprang America’s first written constitution, the direct antecedent to the federal Constitution.
Written documents of governance, however, had been the norm for every colony founded by Bible-minded Christians. After all, God had given Moses a fixed written law to govern the nation of Israel. This Mosaic Code was a higher law that men could live by – and appeal to – against the whims of ordinary men. These written documents of governance limited the power of government and gave citizens maximum protection against the decrees of selfish leaders.
The Bible played a critical role in securing and instituting a great many of America’s most significant civil freedoms and rights. As Founding Father Noah Webster stated:
“The learned clergy … had great influence in founding the first genuine republican governments ever formed and which, with all the faults and defects of the men and their laws, were the best republican governments on earth. At this moment, the people of this country are indebted chiefly to their institutions for the rights and privileges which are enjoyed.” (Letters of Noah Webster, 1836)
Daniel Webster, the great “Defender of the Constitution” agreed:
“[T]o the free and universal reading of the Bible in that age men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty.” (Address delivered at Bunker Hill, 1843)
Because the Bible established in America opportunities and freedoms not generally available anywhere else in the world, including the mother country Great Britain, Christian ministers consistently opposed encroachments on the civil and religious liberties that they had helped secure. When the crown-appointed governor tried to seize the charters of Rhode Island, Rev. John Wise rose up in resistance, penning in 1710 and 1717 two works forcefully asserting that democracy was God’s ordained government in both Church and State, thus causing historians to title him “The Founder of American Democracy.” (at: http://www.bwlord.com/Ipswich/Waters/TwoPatriots/JohnWise.htm)
When other crown-appointed governors in Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Georgia tried to disband their legislatures, clergy were at the forefront of resistance. When the British imposed on Americans the 1765 Stamp Act, at the vanguard of the opposition to the Act were the clergy (Alice Baldwin). As tensions with the British grew, ministers the likes of George Whitefield and Timothy Dwight became some of the earliest advocates of American separation from Great Britain.
When the Founders crafted the historic Declaration of Independence in 1776, followed by the Constitution in 1787, the merging of the Bible’s worldview and teachings with Enlightenment civil republican ideals, shaped the form, scope and purpose of government in a way never before undertaken in human history. The experiment was on! So what is the purpose of government?
The Founders:
For the Founders the purpose of government is to secure and protect the natural rights of its citizens, their right to life, liberty and property.
It is these rights which the Protestant clergy and citizenry in the American colonies had been discussing and debating for decades. These are human rights not given by government but God-given rights you possess by birth. They are natural. They are inalienable, that is, unable to be taken away from the one to whom they are given. They are rights by nature and it is the purpose of government to protect and secure these rights of its people.
For the Founders, a government’s legitimacy depended on its willingness to protect and secure these natural rights. If a government was willing to protect and secure the rights of its citizens, that government was legitimate. If a government did not, it was not. Their own experience with Great Britain was burning within them. They looked upon Britain as treading on their God-given rights. Therefore, it was not legitimate and they had the right and duty to throw it off and establish a legitimate government.
For the Founding Fathers, the purpose of government is rooted in an understanding of permanent and just government. A just government is a government that secures the natural rights of its citizens. Natural rights are universal and unchanging and so just government is universal and transcends time also.
“That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” (Declaration of Independence)
The Bible taught the Protestant citizenry that it is God who establishes government among men (Romans 13). Once established, men then have the freedom to shape the form and scope of governments among themselves.
The purpose of just government is to protect the rights of citizens from outsiders. There are those outside the nation’s citizenry who would seek to take away their rights. Protection means maintaining a strong national defense against foreign attack; adopting policies for armed forces, foreign policy, diplomacy, state-craft, negation, alliances. It means securing the borders of the nation against intrusion by non-citizens.
The purpose of just government is to protect the rights of citizens against fellow citizens. Protection against fellow citizens means deterring crime by making and enforcing criminal law and making it clear to people who commit crimes that they are going to pay a penalty. Criminal law is needed because there are vicious and immoral human beings who try to take away the rights of other people.
Protection from fellow citizens includes enforcing civil law that defines property, contracts and minor injuries so people can effectively exercise their right to acquire and possess property and sue people for less than criminal injuries. State laws must protect the integrity of the family by defining marriage and specifying duties and rights of family members. Local governments provide a safety net for the destitute and needy. In addition, government supports the minimal moral duties and rights of a free society through schools, encouragement of religion and safe-guarding public monuments to the nation’s heroes.
The Progressives: 1890s to mid-1960s
Progressivism is a direct and conscious rejection of the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. It is an argument to move beyond the principles of the American founding and the original structure and purpose of the American government.
For the progressives, government is fluid and historically contingent. The end and scope of government changes with time. Its shape and scope is relative to new times and circumstances.
Human beings have no unchanging human nature. They are not born with inalienable rights given by God. Human nature is malleable. The purpose of government, then, is to shape and create individuals. Its task is to change your nature by creating programs that give you resources which will make you into the kind of person the progressives are sure you need to be. An individual may not want to be shaped and created in that way but the scientific experts know what is best. The individual is less important than the society being created by the progressive vision.
Government creates individuals by first deciding what people need and then providing it for them by a) the redistribution of resources and b) transforming the character of inferior citizens through “uplift”. Human beings are by nature unfree and unequal. The main task of government is to make them equal.
The Post-60s Progressive Liberals
While there are discontinuities, there are nevertheless strong continuities between the older progressives and the post-60s progressive liberals.
The new liberals continue to accept the progressive view that government is historically relative. Human beings have no fixed nature that can guide human life. The purpose of government is to create individuals.
The Post-60s progressive liberals go further, however, and see the purpose of government above all to be that of protecting the rights of the less advantaged – women, the poor, racial minorities, sexual minorities, the disabled - the least among us. Society has oppressed and wronged these less advantaged and it is the task of government to right the wrongs and create a new socially just society. The purpose of government becomes that of promoting policies that spread the wealth around.
“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you has a chance to succeed too. I think when you spread the wealth around it is good for everybody.” (Barack Obama to Joe the Plumber)
Bullets For Reflection:
God established government for our good, to punish evildoers and praise those who do good (Romans 13).
Government is necessary because human beings are not angels.
“What is government but the profoundest of all reflections on human nature. If men were angels no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither internal nor external controls from the government would be needed.” (James Madison, Federalist 49)
Utopians think that human nature can be remade. Can you point to a scintilla of evidence in human history that can support such an ideology? Wouldn’t a sober realism be a better way forward?
“The attempt to make everyone equal will not only destroy liberty. It would also deprive people of the possibility of failure, their best incentive to master their self-destructive impulses and cultivate their talents.’ (James Madison)
Many state and city officials today seem uninterested in performing the tasks our Founders expected legitimate government to do: major cities have huge numbers of unsolved murders (Chicago); there is a back-log of unprocessed rape kits (Detroit); cities are allowed to become full of drugs and excrement (San Francisco). Antifa and anarchists are left unrestrained (Portland).
Is there not something wrong in state and local government where money is spent on something of a lower priority than the actual protection of the lives and property of its citizens?
Is the current call to defund the police a good idea? When vicious and immoral people try to take away your right to life, liberty and property, who will protect you if the police are not there? To the de-prioritization of criminal law today and the inability of police and prosecutors to fine, prosecute and punish criminals successfully, both the Bible and the Founders would say, “You don’t understand what government is for!”