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- Nov 8, 2008
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- Very Conservative
It's role is to represent society, to protect people from violation, and in my opinion to help structure and provide the economic functions, but not to engineer people's personal lives.
The role of the gov't is to maintain order, justice and security. This includes supporting the necessary social structures required for this. Atomism is not good for society, not any kind of social arrangement can create order and freedom. The state, or rather gov't, has a duty to help maintain the necessary social order as it is a part of that order.
As I said above.
The reason it requires this light to moderate place in maintaining social stability and authority is because in this day and age there are strict limits to authority of those groups and leaders of social associations. The parent's authority is very circumscribed, as is the that of the kinship group and its pater familias or even mater familias, as is the local community and its leaders, the priests, the employers, the guild/union leaders etc. With the authority of these greatly reduced the state needs to pick up the slack a little.