Protection from Power: Autonomy, Stability, and the Limits of Authority
A steward’s duty includes not just acting but knowing when not to.
Introduction: When Government Becomes the Threat
A government powerful enough to protect is also powerful enough to harm. The same tools that allow it to respond to crisis, enforce laws, and shape society can be used to dominate, punish, or intrude where it does not belong. That is the double edge of state power, and history offers no shortage of examples where it has turned inward, against the very people it claims to serve.
The problem is not only force. It is also instability, unpredictability, and overreach. Governments that drift into authoritarianism, swing wildly with elections, or insert themselves into the most personal decisions of private life are not protectors. They become threats. When the institutions meant to safeguard rights instead undermine them, the public rightly loses faith.
Stewardship demands more. It is not enough for leaders to mean well or act boldly. The power to govern must be held within ethical limits. It must be guided by principles that recognize where action is necessary and restraint is essential.
To protect the people includes protecting their autonomy. To serve the public good includes preserving stability. And to wield power responsibly means understanding that authority, when left unchecked, will always grow beyond its bounds.
Real stewardship doesn’t confuse governance with control. It sees freedom not as something granted by government, but as something government is bound to defend, even from itself.
The Innocent Individual and the Boundaries of Power
One of the clearest limits on government authority must be the human body. The right to bodily autonomy is not just a private matter. It is a civic principle. It draws a boundary that power is not meant to cross without extraordinary justification.
Protection is not the same as control. A government may have an interest in public health, safety, or the administration of justice, but it cannot use that interest as a blank check to override personal agency. Especially when it comes to deeply personal and often painful decisions about medical care, identity, and mortality, the role of power is to protect the right to choose, not to dictate the outcome.
Reproductive rights, gender-affirming care, and end-of-life decisions are not abstract political topics. They are real situations faced by real Americans. And in each case, the individual, not the state, must be the principal actor. A government that claims to serve the people cannot also claim ownership over their most private choices.
Stewardship draws a hard line here. It recognizes the difference between collective interest and personal liberty. It resists the urge to legislate identity, enforce morality, or claim authority over the bodies of the innocent. It approaches each use of power with caution, not prejudiced certainty. With humility rather than dominance.
A steward does not take lightly the decision to override autonomy. It is never done to assert values, impose doctrine, or play politics. It is only done when absolutely necessary to prevent direct harm. Even then, it must be done with the greatest care, and with full respect for the dignity of the person affected.
If freedom means anything, it must include the right to make decisions about your own body, your own health, and your own identity. No one else should have the power to choose for you. Especially not the government.
The Dangers of Moral Authoritarianism
When government stops protecting rights and starts enforcing values, it crosses into dangerous territory. That is the essence of moral authoritarianism: when policy becomes a tool for dominance rather than service. The state begins to act not as a steward of the people, but as a weapon for one group’s moral vision.
State-imposed morality happens when laws are written not to serve public safety or welfare, but to assert religious or cultural control. It appears in efforts to ban certain books, censor curricula, or limit medical options, not because they are harmful, but because they challenge and offend a dominating belief. It shows up when the state takes sides in private matters of conscience.
Weaponized governance is what follows. Laws are crafted to punish dissent. To isolate, shame, or drive out those who live, believe, love, or even look differently. This is not a defense of society. It is a betrayal of it. A country cannot be both free and punitive towards diversity. It cannot claim to represent people while silencing vast numbers of them.
A stewardship government rejects this path. It understands that governing a diverse nation requires more than managing resources. It requires protecting pluralism. The right of people to live alongside one another with differences intact. It means safeguarding the rights of religious and non-religious alike. It means defending both majority traditions and minority identities.
A steward does not enforce conformity on the public. A steward protects space for private conscience, because without that space, freedom cannot survive. Public authority must serve all, not just those who agree with it. That is the measure of a just society: not how it treats the faithful and familiar, but how it protects the rights of those who choose a different path.
Protection Through Predictability: Stability as a Civic Asset
Stability is one of the most overlooked forms of protection a government can provide. People thrive when they can plan ahead, set goals, and trust that the basic structures of society will hold. When conditions are predictable and systems are reliable, individuals and communities are free to grow.
By contrast, instability produces fear. It creates economic anxiety, social fragmentation, and political volatility. People become more vulnerable to misinformation, more prone to extremism, and more likely to disengage altogether. A society that lurches from one crisis to another loses its footing, its faith in democracy, and its position in the world.
Stewardship values stability, not as stagnation, but as a foundation. It creates the conditions in which success can be made permanent.
One example is indexing policies to real conditions. Instead of forcing a political battle every few years, stewardship would tie things like minimum wage, disability benefits, and tax brackets to real, transparent measures of the economy, accounting for things like inflation and productivity. That approach builds predictability into the system, allowing people to make decisions with confidence about work, savings, entrepreneurship, and family.
Another tool is obligated multi-year public funding, especially in core areas like education, healthcare, infrastructure, and emergency response. Schools and clinics should not live year-to-year at the mercy of political winds. A stewardship approach funds what works with foresight.
When systems are designed this way, successes build atop each other, progressing like a ratchet. Hard-won gains are not constantly at risk of reversal. Policy becomes less about swinging pendulums and more about steady improvement.
Stability does not mean resisting change. It means making success stick.
Building Systems that Incentivize Widespread Thriving
A steward does not merely prevent harm. A steward builds conditions where broad success becomes likely. Where systems reward health, growth, and shared prosperity instead of private exploitation.
In too many cases today, the incentives that shape our economy and governance point in the wrong direction. Profit is extracted without responsibility. Leaders are rewarded for cutting budgets, not reducing harm. Public office becomes a ladder for personal enrichment rather than a platform for service.
Stewardship flips this logic. It asks: What if our systems were designed to reward the public good?
A stewardship-minded government would link incentives to real outcomes for people. For example, business tax credits could be tied to equitable wage increases, not just job counts or vague promises of growth. Companies that invest in their workers should be rewarded, because that investment lifts communities, not just shareholders.
Government executives and administrators could earn performance bonuses based on poverty reduction, not just cost savings. If the measure of success is human wellbeing, then public servants should be aligned with the outcomes that actually matter to the people they serve.
Members of Congress and federal leadership should be prohibited from owning individual stocks while in office. Instead, their financial interest could be held in broad national index funds, tying their personal economic stake to the well-being of the entire country, rather than playing insider trading games while picking winners and losers.
This is the core of the stewardship philosophy: leadership that wins when the people win. The goal is not just better policies, but better incentives. Rules that make service profitable in the broadest sense and make exploitation unworkable.
The system should not reward those who succeed at the expense of others. It should elevate those who build conditions where others succeed with them.
Stability Within Government Itself
Stewardship is not a lifelong entitlement. It is a season of service. A good system protects the country from instability, but it must also protect it from stagnation.
In many parts of public life, we recognize the value of rotation. The military, the intelligence community, and other public safety roles impose mandatory retirement ages. They are rules that exist not to devalue experience, but to ensure readiness, renewal, and institutional health. Yet, in elected office, the trend has gone in the opposite direction. Many of the nation’s most powerful figures remain in place for decades, often insulated from consequences and disconnected from current realities.
A stewardship mindset asks: Why should elected office be exempt from the basic principle that leadership must be refreshed?
Term limits and age thresholds are not about disrespect. They are about making room. They ensure that new perspectives have a chance to emerge, and that power doesn’t harden into entitlement. Rotation brings resilience. It helps institutions adapt, evolve, and stay connected to the people they serve.
And when a steward’s time in power ends, there is still a role to play. Elder statesmen are not supposed to be power holders. They are meant to be mentors. Wisdom should guide from the side, not rule from above. The highest calling of public service is not permanence. It is to contribute with grace to know when to step aside.
Stewardship as a Guardian of Restraint
Stewardship is not about intruding on everything. It is about doing what is right, and sometimes, that means knowing when not to act. This is the paradox of power: that to truly protect, government must be willing to limit itself.
Restraint is not weakness. It is one of the hardest disciplines to practice, especially in politics. There is constant pressure to act, to intervene, to respond with force or control. But more power is not always the solution. Sometimes, it is the problem.
A steward must begin every decision with a pause and a set of questions:
Is this action necessary? Not merely popular, not politically useful, but genuinely needed for the common good.
Will it empower or suppress? Does it open space for people to thrive, or does it shrink their agency?
Does it build trust, or merely assert control? Trust is the currency of good governance. Once lost, it is hard to regain. Every use of power should earn trust, not exploit it.
The true mark of a public servant is not how much they command, but how carefully they carry their authority. To govern with restraint is to understand that the people do not exist to be managed. They are the root of authority and power, and are to be served, protected, and respected.
Stewardship means using power with humility. It means choosing transparency over secrecy, caution over coercion, and consent over imposition. It is not about how far government can reach. It is about how faithfully it can uphold the freedom and dignity of those it serves.
Closing: Freedom Requires Boundaries on Power
Freedom is not the absence of government. It is the presence of boundaries around power, including the government itself.
A healthy society does not need a ruler or a ruling class. It needs stewards. Those who understand that leadership is not domination, but responsibility. That protection must include limits. That provision must preserve liberty. And that even good intentions, unchecked, can lead to overreach.
We live in a time when people are rightly skeptical of institutions. That skepticism does not come from hostility to the idea of government. It comes from lived experience watching power serve itself, intrude too far, or swing wildly with ideology. It stems from witnessing the consequences of denying autonomy, when systems are unstable, and when laws are written to punish difference rather than protect dignity.
The task of stewardship is to reverse that trend. To rebuild trust by putting boundaries back in place. To govern with vision and restraint. With action and humility.
The Civic Covenant of restraint and care: that those entrusted with power will use it wisely, sparingly, and always in service to the people. That freedom will be defended. From enemies foreign and domestic. From those who would destroy and those who would control.
A free society cannot be passive. Neither can it afford domination disguised as safety. Real freedom lives where power is held in balance. Where those who serve remember the sacredness of what they are entrusted with and that the limits must always remain.