Government: What good is it?

While at first glance I might be inclined to agree with this Tulsa World cartoon by Bruce Plante, I think the title will be construed by too many as a dismissal of government as such. In this I include those who are fond of equating any criticism of the growth of government power - or advocacy of restraining such growth - with the irrational hatred of government demonstrated by Timothy McVeigh when he blew up the Murrah Building.

Instead, I choose to take the title at face value: as an invitation to explore the true value of government, and answer that government is a value only when it restricted solely to the protection of individual rights.

Anytime government steps beyond that role, it becomes, instead, a destroyer of value. Plante's cartoon does an excellent job of illustrating this.