One of the Bases of My Government Philosophy

This is from a little speech I gave when I was running for a neighborhood chair position in Utah.

My name is Hannah DeForest. I’ve lived here for almost four years with my husband and our four young girls.

I have been studying the proper role of government for 5 or 6 years now and the current state of our government concerns me very deeply. I am not suggesting that anyone has anything but the best of intentions in trying to lead this nation, this state, or even this city but never-the-less our ignorance has placed us in a position contrary to true freedom and in a place where government at all levels is taking upon itself power.

I want to share one principle of good government with you that would strongly direct my chairmanship if I was to be elected.

What is government? I’m going to borrow this answer from an address given by Ezra Taft Benson, former Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower administration. It was published in 1968.

"Government is nothing more or less than a relatively small group of citizens who have been hired, in a sense, (elected) by the rest of us to perform certain functions and discharge certain responsibilities which have been authorized. It stands to reason that the government itself has no innate power or privilege to do anything. Its only source of authority and power is from the people who have created it. (-WE the People!)

The important thing to keep in mind is that the people who have created their government can give to that government only such powers as they, themselves, have in the first place. Obviously, they cannot give that which they do not possess.

So far so good. But now we come to the moment of truth. Suppose pioneer “A” wants another horse for his wagon, He doesn’t have the money to buy one, but since pioneer “B” has an extra horse, he decides that he is entitled to share in his neighbor’s good fortune, Is he entitled to take his neighbor’s horse? Obviously not! If his neighbor wishes to give it or lend it, that is another question. But so long as pioneer “B” wishes to keep his property, pioneer “A” has no just claim to it.

If “A” has no proper power to take “B’s” property, can he delegate any such power to the sheriff? No. Even if everyone in the community desires that “B” give his extra horse to “A”, they have no right individually or collectively to force him to do it. They cannot delegate a power they themselves do not have. This important principle was clearly understood and explained by John Locke nearly 300 years ago:

“For nobody can transfer to another more power than he has in himself, and nobody has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of another.” (Two Treatises of Civil Government, II, 135; P.P.N.S. p. 93)

THE PROPER FUNCTION OF GOVERNMENT

This means, then, that the proper function of government is limited only to those spheres of activity within which the individual citizen has the right to act. By deriving its just powers from the governed, government becomes primarily a mechanism for defense against bodily harm, theft and involuntary servitude. It cannot claim the power to redistribute the wealth or force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by man. No man possesses such power to delegate. The creature cannot exceed the creator.”