In order to maintain a system of self-government, you must have people who actually govern themselves. People who believe that God expects them to be honest, and to honor their commitments to their families and to each other. When that breaks down, more and more government is necessary to clean up the mess.
“In order to maintain a system of self-government, you must have people who actually govern themselves. People who believe that God expects them to be honest, and to honor their commitments to their families and to each other. When that breaks down, more and more government is necessary to clean up the mess.”
More government is never “necessary”. We have ever more government not because of less God in our lives, but because we have the natural course of bureaucracy is to take more and more power until it is stopped and/or dismantled.
You make a reasonable point that people must be willing to govern themselves - but even in our founding days, we had laws, we had judges, crimes occurred and punishments exacted. There is a misconception that everyone was law-abiding, God-fearing and pious during revolutionary times. That simply isn’t true.
God will not limit our government, throw off tyrannical rules and taxes. We must do that ourselves.
We cannot legislate morality - prohibition is the object lesson for this.
Our founders created a system under which individuals, exercising their freedoms, could live freely and prosper despite the tendency toward immorality that is the base condition of man.