In the classic New Testament passage on civil government, we are informed that rulers are a terror to those who do evil (Romans 13:3). But today throughout the ‘free’ West we see governments being a terror to good, law-abiding citizens. Something has gone radically wrong.
This is not how the state is supposed to operate – at least according to Scripture. Sure, throughout most of human history tyrannical leaders, power grabs, and despotism have been the norm, while free and democratic societies have been the exception.
And hardly any nation was conceived in liberty and the desire to minimize the power and scope of the state. But we had at least one remarkable exception: the United States of America. In what was an almost unprecedented experiment in freedom and limited government, the founding of America was one of the great political stories of human history.
