Every Citizen Needs a Liberty Checklist

Self-government requires more from citizens than voting every few years. It REQUIRES judgment.

In a constitutional republic, citizens are not merely spectators who periodically choose between competing teams. We are ultimately responsible for deciding whom we entrust with political power, which policies we support, and how much authority we are willing to surrender to government.

That responsibility becomes much harder when politics is reduced to personalities, parties, and individual controversies. That is why every citizen who values liberty SHOULD have a checklist. Not necessarily a literal piece of paper carried into the voting booth or pulled out every time a bill is filed, but a consistent framework for evaluating legislation, public policy, government actions, and the politicians asking for our support.

Without such a framework, “limited government” can quickly become little more than a slogan. We oppose government power when our opponents exercise it, then discover reasons to tolerate the same power when our own side is in charge.

A liberty checklist provides a defense against that temptation.

Start With Principles, Not Politics

At Texas Policy Research (TPR), we evaluate public policy through five core principles: individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise, private property rights, and limited government.

Those principles provide a useful lens because they force us to consider something more fundamental than whether we like the person proposing a policy or sympathize with its intended objective.

• Does this policy expand or restrict liberty?
• Does it encourage individuals to take responsibility for their own lives, or transfer another responsibility to government?
• Does it allow people to freely exchange, compete, innovate, and build businesses, or does government begin choosing winners and losers?
• Does it respect the right of people to own, use, and control their property?
• And does government remain within its proper constitutional and legal boundaries?

Those questions should come before party affiliation. They should come before political popularity. Sometimes, they should even come before whether we personally like the outcome.

First Ask: Does Government Have the Authority?

Before debating whether a government action is wise, citizens should ask whether government possesses the legitimate authority to take it in the first place.

This is one of the most important questions in American government, and one of the easiest to skip.

At the federal level, what constitutional authority permits Congress or the executive branch to act? Is the federal government exercising an enumerated power, or assuming an authority reserved to the states or the people?

At the state and local level, similar questions apply. Is the official or governmental body acting within authority granted by the Constitution and law? Is one branch exercising powers properly belonging to another? Is an executive attempting to accomplish administratively what should require legislation?

Citizens should also be skeptical when lawmakers transfer broad policymaking authority to administrative agencies and unelected bureaucracies.

There is an important principle behind all of this: Government should have to establish its authority before citizens are required to justify their liberty.

The existence of a problem does not itself create government power to solve it.

A Problem Does Not Automatically Require a Government Solution

This may be the most important habit a limited-government citizen can develop.

Something can be bad without requiring legislation. Something can be desirable without becoming a government program. Something can be important without taxpayers being responsible for funding it.

When confronted with a public-policy proposal, ask whether government involvement is actually necessary.

Can individuals solve the problem themselves? Can families, charities, churches, voluntary organizations, businesses, or civil society address it? Can competition produce a better solution? Is a lower level of government more appropriate?

And even when government has some legitimate role, another question follows: How much government is actually necessary?

Too often, political debate begins with the assumption that government must “do something.” The disagreement is merely over what.

A liberty-oriented citizen SHOULD be willing to question the premise.

Sometimes the appropriate government response is restraint. Sometimes it is repeal. Sometimes it is doing nothing at all.

Ask What Happens to Individual Liberty

Every law involves government power.

Some uses of that power are legitimate and necessary to protect rights and maintain an ordered society. But citizens should still understand precisely what authority is being granted.

• Does the proposal create a new mandate?
• A prohibition?
• A licensing requirement?
• A surveillance power?
• A government database?
• A new criminal offense?
• A restriction on speech?
• A limitation on the use of private property?
• A new requirement to obtain government permission before peacefully engaging in some activity?

None of those questions automatically settles the issue. They tell us, however, where government power is growing and where individual discretion is shrinking.

The burden should be on government to justify that expansion.

Liberty SHOULD be the presumption, not the exception.

Ask Whether It Encourages Personal Responsibility

Liberty and responsibility cannot be separated.

A free society depends upon individuals having substantial authority over their own lives, but that necessarily means individuals also bear responsibility for the consequences of their choices.

Government policy can weaken that relationship.

• Does a proposal encourage self-reliance and accountability, or does it make individuals increasingly dependent upon government?
• Does it empower parents and families to make decisions, or substitute government judgment for theirs?
• Does it reward responsible behavior or insulate people and institutions from the consequences of poor decisions?

A government that assumes responsibility for every difficulty eventually requires authority over nearly every decision. Personal responsibility is therefore not merely a cultural virtue. It is one of the foundations upon which limited government depends.

Ask Whether Government Is Picking Winners and Losers

Government does not need to nationalize an industry to interfere with a free market.

It can manipulate markets through subsidies, tax preferences, grants, regulations, licensing requirements, mandates, tariffs, special exemptions, and countless other policies that advantage some participants at the expense of others.

Citizens should ask a simple question: Would everyone operate under the same rules?

If government gives one business an advantage unavailable to its competitors, that should invite scrutiny.

If an established industry supports a regulation that imposes enormous compliance costs on smaller competitors, ask why.

If taxpayers are being required to subsidize a politically favored company or industry, ask whether that business should instead succeed or fail based upon its ability to serve willing customers.

Free enterprise means more than being “pro-business.” It means being pro-competition, pro-entrepreneurship, and skeptical of government favoritism regardless of which company receives the benefit.

Ask What Happens to Private Property

Property rights are among the clearest dividing lines between a government of limited powers and one that assumes broad authority over private life.

• Does the proposal restrict how someone can use their land, home, business, or other property?
• Does government obtain additional authority to seize property?
• Does regulation substantially diminish an owner’s ability to use what belongs to them?
• Are property owners being forced to bear costs that properly belong to the public?
• Are taxes becoming so burdensome that ownership increasingly resembles renting property from the government?

Property rights should not be treated as a secondary economic concern. The ability to acquire, use, enjoy, and dispose of property is inseparable from individual liberty itself.

When government controls property, it inevitably gains greater control over the people who depend upon it.

Follow the Money

Every government program ultimately consumes resources produced by someone else. That makes fiscal scrutiny an essential component of any liberty checklist.

• How much will the proposal cost?
• Where will the money come from?
• Does it require higher taxes, fees, assessments, borrowing, or debt?
• If supporters claim the cost is “offset,” are those savings real?
• If a new program is genuinely necessary, is government eliminating something else to pay for it?
• And perhaps the most neglected question: Why should government be spending this money at all?

Merely keeping spending growth below some arbitrary benchmark does not necessarily constitute limited government. Government can grow more slowly and still grow.

Citizens interested in genuinely limiting government should be willing to ask whether spending can be frozen, reduced, or eliminated altogether.

The same scrutiny should apply to regulation. Government imposes costs not only through taxation but through the time, compliance expenses, lost opportunities, and barriers created by its rules.

Look for the Government That Comes With It

One of the easiest ways to evaluate legislation is to look beyond the stated policy and examine the machinery necessary to enforce it.

• Does the proposal create a new agency, board, commission, office, program, or fund?
• Will government need additional employees?
• Does an agency receive new rulemaking authority?
• Will licenses, permits, inspections, reporting requirements, or databases be necessary?
• Does the program expire, or is it likely to exist indefinitely?

Government programs have a tendency to become permanent. Bureaucracies develop constituencies. Temporary responses become recurring appropriations. Emergency authorities become ordinary powers.

So whenever government proposes something new, citizens should ask not only what the policy does today, but what governmental infrastructure will remain tomorrow.

Think Beyond the Intended Consequences

Legislation should not be evaluated solely according to what its authors intend. Citizens should consider what is likely to happen after government intervenes.

A price control intended to make something affordable can produce shortages. A licensing regime intended to protect consumers can prevent competitors from entering the market. A subsidy intended to encourage an industry can distort investment and encourage businesses to compete for political favor instead of customers. A regulation imposed upon large corporations can become a competitive moat that those corporations can afford while smaller businesses cannot. And government powers created for seemingly noble purposes can eventually be used for entirely different ones.

Good intentions do not repeal the law of unintended consequences.

The Political-Opponent Test

There is another test that should be applied to virtually every grant of government authority: Would you still support this power if the politician you distrust most controlled it?

Imagine the worst governor, president, mayor, prosecutor, regulator, or bureaucrat you can envision.

Now give that person the authority being proposed. Still comfortable? If not, the problem may not simply be who currently holds office. The problem may be the power itself.

This test is especially important because political coalitions naturally evaluate government differently depending upon who controls it.

Executive power suddenly seems more dangerous when the other party wins. Government surveillance becomes more troubling when another administration controls the database. Regulatory authority becomes more threatening when another political faction appoints the regulators.

But constitutional limitations are specifically valuable because they survive elections. The purpose of limiting government is not merely to restrain bad people. It is to restrain POWER.

Apply the Same Checklist to Politicians

The framework should not stop with legislation. Politicians should be evaluated according to the same principles.

Campaign rhetoric tells you what politicians want you to believe. Governing records tell you what they actually believe government should be allowed to do.

• Do they reduce government or merely redirect it toward their own priorities?
• Do they cut spending or simply argue that their spending is more worthwhile?
• Do they eliminate regulations or replace one regulatory regime with another?
• Do they defend property rights when politically influential interests want the property?
• Do they oppose corporate welfare when the beneficiary is a company or industry they like?
• Do they defend constitutional liberties when the person exercising those liberties is unpopular?
• Do they respect the constitutional boundaries of their own office?
• Most importantly, when politicians obtain power, do they ever willingly surrender any of it?

That is a much more meaningful test of limited-government credentials than a campaign speech.

Principles Matter Most When They Are Inconvenient

Almost everyone can support limited government when limiting government produces the outcome they already wanted. The test comes when principle conflicts with political preference.

It is easy to oppose executive overreach when the other party controls the executive branch. It is harder when an executive we supported is pursuing an outcome we like.

It is easy to oppose wasteful spending when the money funds someone else’s priorities. It is harder when the spending benefits our community, preferred industry, or political constituency.

It is easy to defend free speech when we agree with the speaker. It matters considerably more when we despise what the speaker has to say.

The same applies to property rights, due process, privacy, economic liberty, and nearly every other limitation placed upon government.

Principles that apply only when politically convenient are not principles.

They are preferences.

The Bottom-Line Question

After considering constitutional authority, necessity, individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise, property rights, fiscal consequences, bureaucracy, and unintended consequences, the citizen eventually arrives at a foundational question:

Does this leave peaceful individuals with more control over their own lives, or does it give government more control over them?

Not every issue can be reduced perfectly to that question. Government has legitimate functions, particularly protecting individual rights, administering justice, and performing those responsibilities properly entrusted to it under our constitutional system.

But the presumption matters.

If a proposal requires more government power, more spending, more bureaucracy, more regulation, or less individual freedom, the default position of someone committed to limited government should not be immediate acceptance.

It should be skepticism.

Government should have to make the case for why additional power is necessary. Citizens should not have to make the case for why they should remain free.

Citizenship Is More Than Choosing a Team

Ultimately, this is why a liberty checklist matters.

The American experiment in self-government DEPENDS upon citizens capable of exercising independent political judgment.

We cannot outsource that responsibility to political parties. We cannot outsource it to politicians. We cannot outsource it to organizations, commentators, influencers, or people we happen to trust.

They can inform our judgment. They should never replace it.

A partisan asks, “Who proposed it?”

A political strategist asks, “Does this help our side?”

An interest group asks, “How does this affect us?”

A citizen committed to liberty should ask something more fundamental: “Should government have this power at all?”

There will be difficult cases. Reasonable people committed to liberty will sometimes reach different conclusions. No checklist can eliminate judgment.

That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to discipline our judgment by forcing us to begin with principle rather than politics. Because the ultimate test of our commitment to liberty is not how much government power we oppose when our enemies wield it.

It is how much government power we are willing to reject when our friends do.