The Collective Guard
The purpose of a commonwealth is to guard a community's resources and communal solutions are identical to private property for individuals.
This is the baseline for higher human flourishing, validated by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
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Everyone in society has a vested interest in protecting the Commonwealth, yet there are quite a few that have forgotten the two aspects of acquisition and cultivation.
Left to politicians and bureaucrats the Commonwealth gets depleted and undoubtedly democracy, understood as mob rule, only accelerate the problems of taking a very short-sighted view of resource allocation. Again, bureaucracies are bastions of socialism. They do not know how to rationally allocate resources to their highest valued ends according to customer demand.
Self-Government Guards The Common Good
Politics is a distorting factor in resource allocation. We see this in times of crisis just like the two hurricane examples I mentioned. Anyone that has been in the military or deployed to a combat zone can attest to the absurdity of “your tax dollars at work”.
Left under political and bureaucratic management resources will be depleted and public benefits are merely tangential to feeding the political-bureaucratic machine. Politicians and civil servants do not lose their self-interest once they enter government office.
This is why the Constitution for the United States limited the authorities to specifically enumerated tasks and revenues collected, under law, can only be in the furtherance of these limited powers. Yet the Constitution has quite obviously failed at limiting the general government to its proper scope and sphere.
Protecting the commonweal, or the Commonwealth to use the political term, requires active participation from all parties to the contract. Again, this is why the Second Amendment needs to be taken in context with article 1, section 8, clauses 15 & 16. We the people, organized, armed, and trained to “execute the laws, repel invasions, and suppress insurrections” is all about self-government.
Governments will not limit themselves. Left unchecked they will spend the commonweal to the point of mass deprivation. Cultivating a prosperous society requires the protection of private property, freedom of contract, and the rule of universal laws. Remember good law only has two real statements: do all that you have agreed to do and do not encroach upon other people or their property. This encompasses contract and criminal law.
It’s very easy, to recognize when a crime has occurred by using this universal standard. Contracts, however, are more complex. The United States Constitution is also a contract for services. Ensuring that each service is carried out faithfully has proven to be quite a challenge.
Protecting the collective komebitsu, the commonweal, is why citizen-warriors need to be engaged in active self-government now more than ever.