Kansas primary elections are next Tuesday and as Ronald Reagan once said, "…we have come to a time for choosing. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector."

And what is our government's legitimate function?  Our Constitution's Preamble says "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty."

Providing for law and order, the common defense and securing liberty all seem pretty clear.  Not so clear is promoting the general welfare.  The founding fathers certainly didn't mean the establishment of a welfare state nor were they advocating socialism or communism that liberals push us ever closer toward each day.

On the contrary the founders were rugged individualists that inherently believed in property rights and distrusted authority. They knew all too well about the abuse of power and individual/state's rights when too much power devolves to any central authority-- say like a despotic monarch or an overtaxing parliament/legislature.

The founders believed in capitalism, free markets, and private businesses and believed that government, although a necessary evil, needed to be kept small, with its powers limited and dispersed to keep it from depriving people and businesses of the rewards of their work--their wages, their property, and their liberty.  That's why taxes, while necessary, need to be kept low. Legitimate government functions need to be conducted and fairly paid for while only lightly infringing on an individual's liberty, money, or pursuit of happiness and the ability to take care of one's own family and their lives.

But too often today we're taken in by the politician's siren call of promises to deliver "free" education, "free" healthcare, Medicare, social security and other "entitlement" freebies.  We want to believe that and we want to trust their good intentions, but we know that there are no real "free" lunches.  Everything comes at some cost and that cost is always our freedom and ability to choose for ourselves.

We continue to trade our freedoms and tax dollars for false hopes and politicians' promises to take better care of us than we can do for ourselves.  How ludicrous.  Conservatives don't trust liberals to choose for them and likewise liberals bashing moderates, like President Bush for 8 years, let alone true conservatives, demonstrates they don't want right-wing politicians deciding for them either. 

So why are so many willing to trust "the government" to do anything for them other than what is absolutely necessary?

Government keeps getting bigger and more powerful and as it does it requires more of people's confiscated property—called taxes—just to pay the politicians and run the government.  That's always before it delivers anything "free" back to the people who, today, include more and more non-citizens. 

So why not cut out the "middle man" politician by keeping more of our own money in the first place? That's what cutting taxes does—it takes decisions away from politicians and returns it to the individual where it rightfully belongs.  Most, if not all, people know what they want for their lives better than any politician or government official ever could. Of course that would mean foregoing things like rationed healthcare, poor performing public education systems, reduced tuition for illegal aliens, loan guarantees for weak home lenders and buyers and other out-of-control, pork-barrel, earmark spending scams.

Voting for politicians seeking more laws, more government, more power, and more taxes is always a vote to place more constraints on one's liberty, or forfeiting it completely.  Next Tuesday we are free to vote for any reason whatsoever.  Sadly, most will not vote at all. That's one's right in America and much too frequently exercised. Others will vote frivolously, like many do, in high-school level popularity contests. 

But informed voters, some with candidates they know and believe in and others faced with the "lesser of two evils" choice, will select someone they think will not harm them, their interests, their money or their freedom and who will ideally and properly "secure the blessings of liberty." Those voters will be rendering the "greater service" simply by coming to a time of choosing as thoughtful citizens.

Greg Beck is a US Army retiree in Leavenworth who instructs at Fort Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College.

The Week in Review