It is not the duty of politicians to protect the public from every conceivable risk by whatever means they judge expedient. If that were their mandate, consistency would require the prohibition of every activity that carries danger, including eating unhealthy food, swimming in the ocean, or riding a motorcycle. Such paternal intrusion may masquerade as compassion, but it is not the purpose of civil government to parent the public.
The proper role of government is far narrower and far more serious: to ensure that the rights and freedoms of the people are not violated—whether by fellow citizens acting unlawfully or by the state itself acting under the cover of law. Government does not exist to invent, dispense, or revoke rights at will, but to recognise and uphold them.
Historically, in the Western tradition, this understanding rested on the recognition of a moral order above the state. Government was accountable to a higher law, not autonomous, not a law unto itself. It was tasked with rewarding what is good for society and punishing what is evil, according to an objective moral standard rather than political fashion or bureaucratic preference.
In this sense, the foundational rights and freedoms that civil government is meant to protect correspond to the moral law summarised in the Ten Commandments. The prohibition against murder implies a right to life. The prohibition against theft implies a right to private property. The commandment to worship God implies a right to Christian liberty. These are not privileges granted by the state, but moral realities the state is bound to respect and defend.
Accordingly, the government fulfils its duty by punishing those who violate these rights through acts such as murder, theft, or fraud. But what it should not have the authority to do is curtail basic freedoms under the vague promise of keeping people “safe” from every imaginable threat.
Once the principle is accepted that the state’s primary responsibility is to eliminate all perceived risks, except, notably, the risk posed by the state itself, there is no logical limit to its power. Any freedom can be restricted, any right suspended, provided a sufficient pretext is supplied. Safety becomes the universal justification for control.
This is precisely why freedom flourished in the West for centuries. The state recognised an authority higher than itself. Its power was limited because it was understood to be accountable to God, to moral law, and to the people. Christianity, far from being an enemy of freedom, was its great safeguard. It kept tyrants in check by reminding rulers that they were not gods, and that their authority was delegated, bounded, and conditional.
When God is no longer recognised, God-given rights are inevitably transformed into state-sanctioned privileges. What the state gives, it can just as easily withdraw. The people cease to be citizens with inherent dignity and instead become subjects—effectively the property of the state.
But our rights and freedoms are not the government’s to trade away in pursuit of some promised utopia. Government exists for one fundamental purpose: to protect the rights and freedoms of the people from violation—whether by criminals acting unlawfully or by governments acting legally but unjustly. When the state forgets this, it does not make society safer. It makes it less free. And as it has been said, those who would trade their freedom for safety ultimately end up with neither.
