The Conservative does not despise government. He despises tyranny. This is precisely why the Conservative reveres the Constitution and insists on adherence to it.

Consequently, citizen legislators, rotating back to their communities after a short period of public service—considered an indispensable and routine characteristic and design of representative government at the time of the founding, and for a century thereafter—have been replaced with a professional ruling class led by governing masterminds. For the most part, they are isolated from the communities from which they hail and are consumed with the daily jockeying for position and power within their ranks. Moreover, they both pander to and lord over their constituents.

The Conservative does not despise government. He despises tyranny. This is precisely why the Conservative reveres the Constitution and insists on adherence to it.

The oil industry is hardly free to operate as efficiently as it could or to be as responsive to consumer demands as it would like. It has become, in essence, a quasi-state-run enterprise, because it cannot drill, transport, refine, and store fuel without receiving government permission, complying with government regulations, and paying taxes at every level or production.

We should remember that the Declaration of Independence is not merely a historical document. It is an explicit recognition that our rights derive not from the King of England, not from the judiciary, not from government at all, but from God. The keystone of our system of popular sovereignty is the recognition, as the Declaration acknowledges, that 'all men are created equal' and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.' Religion and God are no alien to our system of government, they're integral to it.

Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.

Moreover, it is difficult to reconcile Hobbes’s distrust for the individual with his confidence in the altruistic nature of the individual or individuals who will oversee and control the Leviathan. Are not the latter also of flesh and blood? Hobbes seems to be saying that man’s nature cannot be trusted but the nature of a ruler or a ruling assembly of men can be trusted. How so?