[Aquinasfan]

snake handlers, holistics, aroma therapy et al..goofy maybe, but each is an exercise in volition, and that process is what government is supposed to protect.

The first principle of government is to promote the common good.

Government may tolerate bogus therapies, not because people have an unalienable right to them, but because the therapies generally cause little harm, and an effort to suppress them would be expensive and probably counterproductive.

[petro45acp]

"snake handlers, holistics, aroma therapy et al..goofy maybe, but each is an exercise in volition, and that process is what government is supposed to protect.

The first principle of government is to promote the common good.

Government may tolerate bogus therapies, not because people have an unalienable right to them, but because the therapies generally cause little harm, and an effort to suppress them would be expensive and probably counterproductive."

Can't agree with the 'common good' as first principle of Government. If (first class conditional) the individual free exercise of volition (for or against Christ/the word) is the main reason humanity exists, the institution of government is intended to protect that exercise. Most of everything else is frippery intended by humans to generate temporal power and authority.

Just my take, your mileage may vary.

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[Ken H]

The first principle of government is to promote the common good.

Sounds like a position this person would hold--

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good"
--Hillary Clinton

I think the Founders had a better idea--

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed