Public purpose – public corruption
“No man’s life, liberty or fortune is safe…while our legislature is in session,” declared American founding father Benjamin Franklin more than 200 years ago. The same sentiment still applies today.
But it wasn’t always that way. There was a time when legislating for the “public good” had an altogether different meaning than it does today. As the English legal philosopher Blackstone defined it in 1766, “The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual’s private rights.”
John Locke, another great political philosopher, shared a similar idea of political freedom and individual rights. Locke declared that the reason men enter into society is to secure the adequate protection of their individual rights and private properties. According to Locke, a limited government is necessary to secure man’s inalienable rights, because if a government grew too large, it would tend to threaten the liberty and usurp the individual rights of its citizens.
Our local government has no understanding, no regard, and absolutely no respect for the protection of liberty and individual rights. Limited government is a concept totally alien to virtually all of our elected politicians. They tax, regulate, and spend without restraints–with total reckless abandon.
Consider the new public law that defines “public purpose.” What, exactly, is “public purpose”?
A license to steal, basically. Public purpose, the common good, the welfare of society, etcetera–all basically amount to the same issue: an invented legal principle designed to take from one group of citizens and give to another. To rob, to loot, to expropriate and extort within the letter of the law, through the democratic processes of undermining individual freedom and nullifying individual rights by majority vote.
In a truly free society, individual rights would prevail. Under such an administration, “public purpose” would have no meaning–no legal power to pillage, ransack and plunder. The “public,” after all, is nothing other than the sum of extremely diverse individuals.
I have my purpose. Juan P. Costanza may have another. It may be an entirely different purpose from my own. Jack Malania may have still another purpose different from both Juan and myself. How are we, as distinctly autonomous and self-reliant individuals, to arrive at a bona fide “public purpose”?
According to the Saipan Tribune, “PL 11-84 also aims to set a clear-cut policy on the expenditure of public funds as the Department of Finance and members of the Legislature have had brushes in the past few months when they attempt to reimburse expenses incurred from donations to funerals and other community events under their respective government accounts.”
Using government money to pay for private funerals or so-called community events, such as sporting competitions, fiestas and the like?
If you want it, I say pay for it yourself and please leave me out of it. It’s not my purpose or my interest.
Make no mistake about it: “Public purpose” equals legalized theft and democratic corruption.
