While the federal government has seized control of the most minute details of our personal lives including the very right to seek whatever medical care we can find to retain our life it has refused to carry out, or in some cases even address, the roles for which it has been created.

The last few years have seen a steepening of a disturbing reversal of the roles of governed and their government. In our political history, from drafting of the original articles of confederation forward, we have defined the roles of the federal government and the individual by the principle of natural rights. Man, by virtue of his very birth, is endowed with a slate of rights that are inalienable. He is born alive so he has the right to live. He requires liberty of movement, actions, thought and speech to sustain his life so he has the right to those liberties. He yearns for contentment that makes his life bearable and purposeful so he has the right to pursue happiness. He requires protection from men who would take his life or liberty so he has the right to protect himself. Man is not granted these rights by the government nor guaranteed them by the government. He has been born with them, end of argument.

The federal government, on the other hand, is a social creation which at its best receives strictly limited charge from the governed to perform certain functions which can aid all individuals in the fulfillment of their natural rights. If a government strays beyond those boundaries then to have legitimate authority it would have to have unanimous consent of all citizens that would be subject to those laws that are not directly tied to the good of all men or to exempt those who opted not to participate. The principle of the commonwealth or general welfare is clearly those things that are good for all men, not for a portion of men, be it minority or majority.

So the legitimate role of our Federal government, an artificial social creation, is expressed quite clearly in the original constitution, clarified even more in the Bill of Rights but exists even without the constitution. It is apparent, obvious and natural that functions such as national defense, security of national borders, protection of waterways and coasts, establishment of a common currency, facilitation of communications across distances and the functions which are minimally necessary to bring about those core functions are legitimate functions of federal government. Man, a natural creation, is charged with everything else and still retains the right to take up the legitimate functions of government if it fails to perform them.

Governments are not created to provide for individual needs, not created to ensure equality in any manner beyond equal enforcement of the law, not created to dictate morality, not created to champion causes, not created to become a player in the very political discourse which determines those who serve in the government, not created to do for some men that which they can not or will not do for themselves.

Over the decades we have allowed the federal government to assume functions that are not part of its role in the social contract which our founding fathers created from the doctrine of natural rights. The pace has quickened with time and has leapt forward at an astonishing rate the last year. However for the first time in US History our federal government’s assumption of non-legitimate functions has been rivaled by it’s refusal to carry out the legitimate functions with which it has been charged such as national defense, securing of national borders, protection of citizens from violence and intimidation and equal enforcement of the laws under which we achieve the only legitimate equality.

While the federal government has seized control of the most minute details of our personal lives including the very right to seek whatever medical care we can find to retain our life it has refused to carry out, or in some cases even address, the roles for which it has been created.

In Louisiana we have seen a poignant and potentially life and livelihood threatening example as the federal government has not only refused to take common sense, constructive action to mitigate the damage from the BP oil spill accident but has refused to grant permission or relinquish authority and allow the state of Louisiana and/or Louisianians to perform those functions themselves. The federal government has further embarked upon usage of the tragic accident to advance a political agenda by declaring a moratorium on deep water drilling. This moratorium is contrary to the advice of its own advisors and with full knowledge of the dire consequences such an action will have on the very citizens that the government has refused to allow the legal authority to self preservation.

What is our redress when this reversal of roles has occurred? Perhaps we can gain insight by looking back at a revered American document of freedom signed on July 4, 1776.

“….Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security”

I do not advocate such a harsh measure while thankfully such a change can be effected peaceably at a free polling place. However we need to remain vigilante and prepared for any attempt to deny us this redress in the upcoming 2010 and 2012 elections. Such attempts could come in the form of allowing voter intimidation, promoting voter fraud through illegal proxy voters, inflating the rolls of voters of one political faction with non Americans and those who have sold their allegiance for special favors and public largesse. Louisianians have more grievances than most.