Leviathan, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil

Conservatives and libertarians of the type who frequent this site are often seen as extremists by the left. We will be told that Obama “is simply trying to help people” and that our concerns about individual liberty are misplaced and even paranoid. They are blind to caustic effects on liberty of an ever encroaching central bureaucracy. There is simply no way that a government determined to “help” people with their day-to-day lives without eroding the natural rights and liberties of the people.

Britain is further down the path which Obama is currently marching America. Their increasingly intrusive state apparatus serves as a bellwether for threats against liberty being contemplated and enacted on this side of the Atlantic. In England a pair of police officers, working separate shifts, arranged to look after each others’ children. While one mother worked, the other would provide care for her child. No money changed hands.

Ms Shepherd, who serves with Thames Valley Police, recalled: “A lady came to the front door and she identified herself as being from Ofsted. She said a complaint had been made that I was illegally childminding.

“I was just shocked – I thought they were a bit confused about the arrangement between us.

“So I invited her in and told her situation – the arrangement between Lucy and I – and I was shocked when she told me I was breaking the law.”

Ms Jarrett added: “Our children were never in any harm, they were never in any danger.

Ms Jarrett fails to understand that the state isn’t really concerned about the safety of their particular children and, no doubt, the woman who came to their homes knew the children were in no danger. That really didn’t enter into it. Once the central bureaucracy of the state is put into motion, it moves and operates like the machine it is; without rational thought or logic.

An Ofsted spokesman said it applied regulations found in the Childcare Act 2006, but was currently discussing the interpretation of the word “reward” with the department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

“Reward is not just a case of money changing hands. The supply of services or goods and, in some circumstances, reciprocal arrangements can also constitute reward.

“Generally, mothers who look after each other’s children are not providing childminding for which registration is required, as exemptions apply to them, for example because the care is for less than two hours or it takes place on less than 14 days in a year.

“Where such arrangements are regular and for longer periods, then registration is usually required.”

The state, in order to tax absolutely all even remotely economic activity, must insert itself into even the most mundane aspects of the lives of its citizens. It justifies this on the basis of safety and public health. Many will actually accept this justification and not resist. When this creeping authoritarianism is resisted by conservatives, statists on the left are confused and cannot understand why we would not want the government to help people. The above case is a perfect example of the destruction of liberty government help causes.

This considered, the kingdom of darkness… is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light…. ~Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan

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