Imagining a brighter tomorrow: the key to advancing human progress is not to rely on government to provide our every need, but to limit government so that the people can produce and prosper.

For a total of 27 days in late 1995, the federal government was shut down when Congress and the White House reached an impasse over budget priorities. Government spokesmen and news anchors, their brows furrowed with contrived concern, spoke gravely of an unprecedented "crisis" as hundreds of thousands of "nonessential" federal employees were sent on paid furlough. Among the calamities visited on our republic was a Treasury Department revenue shortfall after the IRS shut down its enforcement divisions.

Oh, the horror.

Curiously enough, the public at large seemed indifferent to the "crisis." Families remained intact. Businesses remained open to serve paying customers, Human progress didn't grind to a halt; in fact, it may have benefited. All of the myriad activities of a productive, civilized society somehow continued to function, despite the partial shutdown of the federal government. Yes, some national parks were closed down, there were delays in processing paperwork for various federal transfer payments, and it was a little more difficult to get a passport, but life went on--and in some ways it improved--as the "crisis" deepened.

And many millions of Americans probably started to wonder if it was really necessary to have such a vast, costly, intrusive federal government. Some actually started to wonder aloud why it was that Washington keeps millions of "nonessential" workers on the public payroll--and why those workers continued to receive a paycheck even after the government was temporarily shut down.

It's tempting to think that Congress and the Clinton administration acted so quickly to end the impasse precisely because the American public was beginning to learn that government intervention was not an indispensable element of civilized life--indeed, that government frequently impedes human progress and happiness.

Please--Neglect Us!

"How little, of all human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure," wrote Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson--who died five years prior to the onset of the French Revolution of 1789--wrote that couplet prior to the advent of the Total State. Accordingly, he couldn't have imagined the misery that could be inflicted on people by a government completely emancipated from laws or limits. The American Founders, who shared Dr. Johnson's views regarding the primacy of private life, had a more developed understanding of the need to limit the power of government by law.

In his 1791 history of the American Revolution, jurist David Ramsay pointed out that the war was triggered by Great Britain's decision to reverse its policy of "benign neglect" toward the colonies.

During a 1764 debate in Parliament, Charles Townshend, author of many of the taxation measures that provoked colonial resistance, insisted that the American colonies had been "nourished up by our indulgence" and therefore owed their prosperity to the policy of the English government. This claim prompted a revealing rejoinder from a Member of Parliament known to history only as Colonel Barre. A critic of Parliament's designs to reduce the colonies to servility, Barre dispensed with the pretense that the British government's interest in them was motivated by compassion:

   They [were] nourished up by your indulgence?
   They grew by your neglect
   of them. As soon as you began to care
   about them, that care was exercised
   in sending persons to rule them in
   one department and another ... sent
   to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent
   their actions, and to prey upon
   them.

In recent decades, presidential candidates from both the Republican and Democrat branches of the Establishment Party have campaigned for office on the theme of building a "compassionate" or "caring" government. But in a very real sense, the American Revolution was fought to overthrow a supposedly "caring" government, and to create an indifferent one--that is, a government limited to specific functions with delegated (and revocable) powers defined by law. Building on their experience, the Framers of the Constitution understood that freedom and human progress would flourish in the absence of government intervention.

An illustration of the Founders' wisdom in this respect was offered by Somalia, a war-torn nation in eastern Africa. With the collapse of the central government in 1991, Somalia reverted to a pre-national condition in which clans contended for power. Warfare and drought combined to create famine conditions, leading to heartrending video images of starving Somalis. Those images, widely broadcast by the media, soon created a public consensus on behalf of "humanitarian intervention" in that unfortunate land.

In 1992, the first President Bush announced that the U.S. would spearhead a UN-led military mission to ensure delivery of aid shipments to starving people. In fact, the famine had broken by the time the UN occupation began. Nonetheless, the UN quickly redefined its mandate from "humanitarian aid" to one of "nation-building." Acting out of what it described as purely altruistic motives, the UN began to disarm Somalis and install a new government. Predictably, this led to widespread revolts, firefights and the death of scores of UN "peacekeepers" (including dozens of U.S. servicemen). The UN withdrew in 1995, branding Somalia a hopelessly "failed state."

But the failure of the state actually abetted the rise of a Somalian civil society. In a report from Somalia published in the May 2001 Atlantic Monthly, author Peter Maas noted that "the very absence of a government may have helped nurture an African oddity--a lean and efficient business sector that does not feed at a public trough controlled by corrupt officials."

Once the UN and other representatives of the "international community" had abandoned the country, Somalis--once on the brink of starvation and utter ruin--discovered the magic of entrepreneurship. Shopping centers, transportation and shipping companies, telecommunications networks, and even Internet service providers began to spring up across the capital city, Mogadishu. Piracy and violent crime were kept in check by private security forces hired and trained by Somali businessmen. Clan and business leaders, observed Maas, even began working "to bring about a new government--one that will keep its hands out of their pockets."

"If the business community succeeds in returning Mogadishu to something resembling normalcy, it will have shown that a failed state ... can get back on its feet without much help from the outside world," commented Maas. Whether or not Somalia succeeds in creating a stable society, the success Maas describes illustrates the validity of our Founders' insights regarding human nature and limited government.

Within a decade, Somalia--which had endured civil war, famine, foreign invasion and occupation--saw the beginnings of what could be considered a culture-specific version of a Jeffersonian minimalist government. In brief, its recovery was brought about because of government "neglect," rather than government intervention.

The Road to Recovery

Granted, Somalia offers an extreme case. Despite its progress, that country is still convulsed with clan-based violence, and mired in poverty. That a land as beset with trouble as Somalia could make such progress unaided--or, better put, unimpeded--by government should inspire optimism about our own nation's prospects for renewal and recovery.

Too many contemporary Americans, particularly those who call themselves "conservative," confuse national power with national greatness: To them what matters is our status as a "superpower," rather than the preservation of our republican institutions. Many have been deceived into measuring our nation's stature by our government's ability to project power and impose its will on other countries. To the extent they reflect on the matter at all, such people seem to believe that our government can assert imperial power abroad without descending into tyranny at home.

But our nation was great long before it was powerful. Blessed with an unfathomable bounty of natural resources, favored with advantageous geography that kept predatory powers at bay, and inhabited by a people given to thrift, industry and piety, our youthful republic was bound to prosper inasmuch as its government permitted it to. Perhaps the most important blessing afforded our nation was a generation of political leaders steeped in history, sensible of the Bible's teachings about fallen human nature, and soberly committed to limiting government to its few legitimate functions.

On his inauguration as the third U.S. president in 1801, Thomas Jefferson described our country as a "rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye":

   Kindly separated by nature and a wide
   ocean from the exterminating havoc
   of one quarter of the globe ... possessing
   a chosen country, with room
   enough for our descendants to their
   thousandth and thousandth generation;
   entertaining a due sense of our
   equal right to the use of our own faculties,
   to the acquisitions of our own
   industry, to honor and confidence
   from our fellow-citizens, resulting
   not from birth, but from our actions
   and their sense of them; enlightened
   by a benign religion, professed, indeed,
   and practiced in various forms,
   yet all of them inculcating honesty,
   truth, temperance, gratitude, and the
   love of man; acknowledging and
   adoring an overruling Providence,
   which by all its dispensations proves
   that it delights in the happiness of
   man here and his greater happiness
   hereafter--with all these blessings,
   what more is necessary to make us a
   happy and prosperous people?

In answer to his own question, Jefferson continued: "Still one thing more [is necessary], fellow-citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities."

Jefferson took notice of some who believed that "this Government is not strong enough ... that it may by possibility want [lack] energy to preserve itself" because of the limited powers assigned to it through the Constitution. "I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth," he insisted. "I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

With typical insight, Jefferson laid bare the big lie at the heart of statism: The notion that those who exercise power in the name of the state are made of purer, more refined material than those whom they govern. That assumption is entirely alien to our republican system. In our republic, the law is king, and those who hold public office are servants of those whom they represent.

The powers of those in government are to be exercised only to protect the rights and property of the citizenry. To do less than this is dereliction; to do more is despotism.

The Wages of Despotism

Our nation has grown tremendously in size, influence and technological sophistication in the two centuries since Jefferson first took the presidential oath. But the growth of the federal government has been even more dramatic. Public debts and the tax burden offer the most obvious, and onerous, manifestations of government growth. Government presently devours nearly one-half of every taxpayer's earnings, while running up debts that are literally astronomical.

The annual budget deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30 is estimated at $422 billion, and the national debt is over $7.3 trillion. Those debts--the cruelest form of taxation without representation--constitute intergenerational socialism, transferring wealth from those yet unborn to be spent in the present.

But even those inconceivable sums fade into insignificance next to the "fiscal gap" created by future federal obligations created by Social Security and Medicare--bills that will start coming due as the Baby Boomers begin to retire in 2008. Noted the September 12 San Francisco Chronicle: "An array of government and private analysts put the actual U.S. 'fiscal gap,' which means all future receipts minus all future obligations, at $40 trillion (Government Accountability Office) to $72 trillion (Social Security Board of Trustees)."

"To give you an idea of how big the problem is," noted economist Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University, "you'd have to have an immediate and permanent 78 percent hike in the federal income tax" to close a $51 trillion fiscal gap. In their study, which projected a $44 trillion gap, Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and former Treasury official Kent Smetters offered four alternatives:

* Raising the payroll tax from 15.3 percent of wages to nearly 32 percent;

* An immediate and irrevocable 67 percent income tax increase:

* An immediate and permanent 45 percent reduction in Social Security and Medicare benefits;

* Eliminating all federal spending--including spending for legitimate federal functions, such as national defense--apart from transfer payments to the elderly.

What If ...?

It is because our federal government has transgressed its constitutional limits that we confront the prospect--in the very near future--of national fiscal ruin. If present trends persist, Washington will either default on its obligations, resort to confiscatory taxation, or (what is much the same thing) "monetize" its debts by printing trillions of increasingly worthless dollars.

Disheartening though it may be, it is useful to contrast the predicament we face with the happy circumstances that existed at the time of Thomas Jefferson's second inauguration in 1805.

"The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes," Jefferson reported in his second Inaugural Address. With government firmly restrained to its constitutional functions, revenues adequate to its operations were collected through tariffs, leaving Americans unmolested by tax collectors.

Across the length and breadth of the United States, Jefferson proudly observed, "it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States? These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations," and to provide for both peacetime internal improvements and the needs of national defense.

What if Jefferson's approach to government persisted to this day? Bear in mind that we are not contemplating a utopian scheme. "Utopia" literally means "no-place." The circumstances Jefferson described actually existed once in our nation. The charter of government that made it possible, the U.S. Constitution, remains in place, despite being disfigured by a number of harmful amendments--especially the 16th (income tax) Amendment--and generally ignored by our leaders.

What if it were possible to restore Jefferson's vision of the "sum of good government"--and of the moral, virtuous public suitable to such a system of government?

What if:

* The central government were once again restricted to carrying out the functions specifically assigned to it by the Constitution;

* Congress were compelled to abolish the insidious practice of deficit spending;

* We once again embraced the foreign policy espoused by Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson--non-intervention in the affairs of other nations, honorable commerce with all, and a military oriented toward actual national defense;

* The abolition of domestic wealth redistribution and foreign adventurism (and foreign aid) made it possible to abolish the IRS, and discontinue all direct taxation;

* Entrepreneurs and innovators were freed from the shackles of federal regulation;

* The federal government ceased to interfere in private business decisions and associations in the name of "civil rights" or "equal opportunity";

* Breadwinners were able once again to keep what they had earned through their discipline and industry, rather than being plundered by Washington;

* The demise of a welfare state based on plunder and powered by organized envy led to a re-birth of the virtues Jefferson described--and a corresponding increase in both private and public morality?

Once again, it is important to recognize that we are describing circumstances that actually existed in our country two centuries ago. There is no legitimate reason to believe we cannot adapt Jefferson's vision--one he shared with the other Founders--to our present situation. Indeed, it is fanciful to believe that our present plunder-based system can continue much longer before it collapses under the weight of its own corruption.

Our nation's resources, both material and intellectual, exceed those of any other society in history. Freed from the burdens imposed by government, our citizenry would be able to display the traits Jefferson discerned in the American character: Honesty, temperance, industry, innovation, piety. Parents freed from taxation and inflation would be able to devote more time and attention to raising their children.

Communities freed from micro-management by Washington would once again be self-governing and responsive to the people. Radical reductions in the expense of government would leave the people with more to invest in charitable and innovative pursuits. And a reversion to Jefferson's policy of "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, [but] entangling alliances with none," coupled with sober provisions for national defense, would go far toward mitigating--and ultimately eliminating--the conflicts that breed terrorism. Toward that end we should also restore our national independence by extricating our nation from the UN, NATO and other multilateral entanglements.

Some might contend that Jefferson's vision is unsuitable to modern times, as if sound principles, like cartons of milk, carried expiration dates. The inescapable reality is that our present system, in which Washington conducts business as if the Constitution didn't exist, is simply unsustainable. Building a better world by reducing the size, scope and intrusiveness of government is not only possible--it is the only realistic alternative.