Governments are failing at their core responsibilities and that needs to change.
The responsibilities of governments arise from two core principles upon which our society is founded:
- that every person is a separate valued being with rights that can not be violated; and
- that governments were created for the purpose of protecting those rights.
Increasingly we see governments abusing the immense powers of public offices to impose laws, policies or programs that undermine those core principles, for example:
- by imposing policies that deny the right of persons to manage their own lives in a sound and responsible way;
- by levying taxes to support policies that are not only poorly conceived, incompetently planned and badly managed, but also incompatible with the needs or wishes of citizens;
- by giving the right to bureaucrats, identifiable groups, companies and private and public institutions to dictate what we must believe, what we must do and how we must live; and
- by denying us the right to services that are essential for our lives .
We see more and more examples where our most basic rights are being trampled by the very institutions that we have created with the duty of protecting them.
If our society is to be returned to a sound footing, this must change.
The required change will only come about if we understand those core principles and the principles that derive from them and if we take steps to ensure that those to whom we entrust the powers of public office consistently defend them.