Can Government Protect Your Liberty?

Joseph Kexel asked this question on Libertarians Unleashed, his blog talk radio show, this evening. It is an interesting question.

We know that governments historically have never protected the liberty of their constituents. They have always done the opposite: led (or driven) them into slavery—short of revolution or collapse.

I can confidently predict that no government ever will protect the liberty of its constituents. Considering the record of government, that is a fairly easy prognostication.

But can government protect your freedom? Is it even possible? That's a tougher question, and an answer I think worth pondering.

If we start with the caretaker-charge paradigm, it is pretty obvious that the patient does not tell the caretaker what to do. It is quite the other way around.

Work that paradigm into the government-constituent relationship, incorporate that into what we see around us in what is commonly referred to as "the nanny state," and...well...the concept of governmental capability of the protection of individual liberty does not hold a lot of promise.