Question: What is government and how should people relate to government?

“We are individuals with immortal souls,” says Judge Andrew Napolitano. “The government is just an organization built on violence and force!”

Napolitano was the Friday night keynote speaker at the 2010 New Hampshire Liberty Forum. He spoke on the Constitution and the history of how the U.S. government routinely and systematically violates the rights that the Constitution meant to guarantee.

“Now why should it be so startling that someone should say that? It’s so patently true and so obvious.”

Not everyone agrees, of course. To some people, the idea that rights are derived from the laws of nature — indeed, the laws of physics — is abhorrent. They would rather see rights as nothing more than special privileges which are granted by government and which can be taken away at any time. Of course, such a view would set back human civilization at least 300 years if it were actually implemented, but as most of us know, it already has been implemented.

From the Alien and Sedition Acts through Abraham Lincoln’s use of military tribunals against Northerners to suppress free speech to the Bush-Obama “war on terror,” Napolitano hit the high points of government abuse of power, illustrating quite well that, as Lysander Spooner famously wrote in No Treason, the Constitution “has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

His was the only speech where audio and video recording were not permitted, which disappointed more than a few people, including myself. Organizer Seth Cohn told me that contractual obligations required them to prohibit recording. Napolitano’s agent, Greater Talent Network, says on its web site that this is meant to protect the speaker’s intellectual property, but suggests that recording is negotiable. Presumably this would have cost (a lot) more money. Napolitano did have some pretty good jokes which you probably should have bought a ticket for, so I’ll let that go for now.

“Gatherings like this, in which people come together because of the fire in their bellies over freedom, is what the government fears,” Napolitano said by way of closing. “In the long history of the world only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. You are that generation, this is your role, and now is that moment of danger.”

I thoroughly enjoyed the speech and I wish I could share more of it with you than a few brief quotes I was able to write down. I did pick up a copy of Napolitano’s new book, Lies The Government Told You, had it signed, and promptly wrapped it up in a plastic bag. I’m going to have to read some other copy now; that title just strikes too close to home.

The New Hampshire Liberty Forum is an annual conference held by the Free State Project, a movement to bring 20,000 activists to New Hampshire to work toward reducing the size, scope and power of government and increasing individual liberty and responsibility. The project has signed over 10,000 participants, and over 800 have already moved. The Liberty Forum, and the project’s summer camping event, PorcFest, allow people undecided about the project to see the state firsthand and observe and participate in local activism.

["Andrew Napolitano" photo by Gage Skidmore; CC BY-SA 2.0]