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Government is and has always been about law -- creating law, executing law, interpreting law, and enforcing law. Healthcare doesn't have a natural, direct relat
by TimTheTinker 8y ago
Government is and has always been about law -- creating law, executing law, interpreting law, and enforcing law. Healthcare doesn't have a natural, direct relationship to law like prisons and courts do.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Government is and has always been about law Government has always been about the legitimatized application of force; the use of law as one of the key components of the legitimization of force is very old, but not essential to the concept government (it's essential to modern, and even many older, norms or models of government, though.)
- TimTheTinker 8y agoThe principle of the rule of law says that all parties, even the government itself, are subject to the law. This would imply that any application of force on the government's part must only be done in the service of the law. This is how government ought to be, and has been at least several times in the last 1000 years. The Magna Carta is famous for first codifying the rule of law principle.
- genericid 8y agoIf the principle of rule of law meant that a democratically elected government cannot use its powers to take care of its citizens, it would simply be a bad principle.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoA democratically elected legislature's job is to write the will of the people into law.
- AngryData 8y agoSo if the people's will is guaranteed basic medical services available to all, I don't see what the problem there is.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoThere needs to be a distinction between fundamental government functions (those that exist to establish the rule of law) and those that were created by law. It's the fundamental government functions that should never be outsourced. (If the people's will is that government take care of other matters, no problem. They can choose either way, provided the resulting laws are not unconstitutional.)