With every right comes a duty. Whenever we assert that we have a right that is basic and important, the only way to guarantee it is by upholding that right for ourselves and others. There is an accompanying responsibility that comes with it that must always be recognised.

It is a reasonable assumption that every individual's preferred status is geared towards freedom and autonomy: they want to decide where their resources and money go, they want to know what is happening to them and they want to know that their wishes are being followed.

What happens when an individual's own independent decision restricts the autonomy of others? Then their own autonomy becomes restricted. The thief who steals the resources of another becomes imprisoned against his will. An eye for an eye is the effective outcome in most cases: the payment may not be exactly equal but the payment is made.

Now let us look at this in a wider scale. Let us call the population the thieves and the government their policeman.

It is a reasonable assumption to make that since we are largely leaning towards maximal freedom, that we wish as minimal governmental interference in our lives. However, this means we have a responsibility. We have a responsibility to ensure that this interference is not required.

Governments only have as much power as their populace gives them, mainly through the amount of interference and involvement we allow.

I see this interference every day. I see it in our failures. Every time a person is unemployed and goes on welfare, every time a family undergoes a troubled divorce, every time a member of a family is left in the care of the state.

Once family breaks down, once community breaks down, once society breaks down, then this is when the government becomes the new society, the new community, the new family.

The government uses your desire for an easier life and abdicating personal responsibility to become responsible for you. The government becomes responsible for what you should be responsible. The government cares for those you love and those that surround you. The government cares for criminality and addicts. The government cares for your planning permission, which you can't resolve because you don't know how to deal with your neighbour.

All this is when you lose any control over the world that surrounds you.

An easy life is not the life you choose freely.

Do you ever envy the parasite that preys on waste itself and benefits noone? Do you ever envy what lives and dies only to feed an appetite that can never be satiated?

If your answer is no, then do what you can to ensure that you do not become a parasite on the body politic. Do what you can to live a life where all those immediately around you can rely on you and you can rely on them. Family first, friends first, community first and government last.

That is as it should be.