It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong - Andrew P. Napolitano [145]
Thus, unless at least one of these requirements is met, there cannot be a moral justification for government punishing an individual for wrongdoing, and thus, there is no concurrent justification for criminalization. It is absolutely essential to the ideal of limited government, and the pursuit of freedom, to limit the criminal law to only what is necessary to safeguard our liberties, and that means only prosecuting those who intentionally cause real harm by violating another’s natural rights without his consent and without moral justification.
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Conclusion
In sum, although the ostensible purpose of the criminal law might be to protect us from harm, too much prosecution is a far greater evil than too much crime. “Why?” you might ask. If you fear crime, then you are free to help yourself by locking your doors and buying a gun. Every sound adult human possesses the natural right to self-defense and all the intelligence and strength needed to exercise that right. If, by contrast, you fear unlawful prosecution, there is no feasible way to resist the coercive power of the state. How long will it be until the state’s long, powerful arm eventually reaches you? How long was it until an unstoppable tide of federal government evicted Native Americans from their homelands? How long was it until the government could command how much wheat you grow in your backyard? It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
No, my reader, the government cannot be constrained, and liberty preserved, by pistols and door locks alone. It is only with laws that we can ensure enduring freedom and the enforceability of natural rights. The Founders recognized this inescapable truth. Certainly, they fought a long and bloody war to escape tyranny. But what did they leave us when the war had been fought, the battles won, and the enemy had retreated from our shores? They left us with a Constitution—a set of laws binding the government based upon the Natural Law—and a hope that it would be honored in perpetuity.
Sadly, since the day of its ratification that Constitution has been battered and worn down to its very bones—a mere skeleton of the liberty our Founders promised us. But, my reader, all the injustice in the world can never destroy the hope of restoring freedom, just as all the darkness in the world can never extinguish the flame in our hearts.
The Founders’ dream lives in each and every human being, as does the power to turn it into a reality. Although it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong, that danger is imperceptible when compared to the danger of languishing for the remainder of our lives in the physical and spiritual chains of tyrants.
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Chapter 15
Ignoring Stupidity:
The Right to Reject the State
Since the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, the final, and capstone natural right, is the right not to consent to any government. When the state has assaulted freedom and offered no accountability, are we simply to relinquish any and all interest in the matter as a lost cause? No, my reader, we must do just as the colonists did in 1776: Alter or abolish the government and institute a new system of laws which allows us to pursue our natural yearnings.
If the government itself came about in America by seceding from Great Britain, if the government itself exists only because free persons have freely given some of their natural freedoms to it, if the sole moral underpinning of the government in America is the free consent of the governed, what becomes of the government when that consent is withdrawn?
This is not the lesson or the argument