05/16/2026
“Once the king is established, the government of the kingdom must be so arranged that opportunity to tyrannize is removed. At the same time his power should be so tempered that he cannot easily fall into tyranny.”
- St. Thomas Aquinas, 𝘋𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘨𝘯𝘰 c. 1265-1267
“A kingdom could be so instituted as that a king may not be at liberty to tyrannize over his people which only comes to pass when the sovereign power is restrained by political laws”
- Sir John Fortescue, 𝘋𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘴 𝘓𝘦𝘨𝘶𝘮 𝘈𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘦 c. 1470, citing Aquinas
Governments need restraining, lest they grow beyond mere administrative matters. Without setting boundaries on the expansion of state and its powers, power tends to concentrate and starts increasing interference in the affairs of business, the economy, private lives of citizens, and other matters.
In their book, 𝘉𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴, clinical psychologists Henry Cloud and John Townsend wrote that boundaries define “what is me and what is not me.” That principle does not only apply to families, marriages, and workplaces. It applies to politics.
In personal relationships, the person without boundaries says:
“Your crisis is automatically my responsibility.”
In politics, the citizen without boundaries is trained to say:
“Every social problem is automatically the government’s responsibility — and therefore automatically my tax burden, my debt burden, my inflation burden, and my loss of freedom.”
A free society requires boundaries around government for the same reason a healthy person requires boundaries around relationships.
When government has no boundaries, the citizen does not merely pay taxes. They become the emotional, financial, and moral shock absorber for a state that refuses to govern itself. Whatever the crisis, the citizens end up bearing the full cost of the burden.
The objection is not that suffering resulting from these crises does not matter, but rather there is no boundary anymore between the legitimate role of government and the private life, labour, property, conscience, and future of the citizen.
The state has become the person in the relationship who never accepts responsibility for its own behaviour, never limits its demands, and treats every “no” as moral failure.
A government without boundaries does not remain compassionate - becomes 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴.
It stops asking, “What are we morally permitted to do?” and starts asking, “What can we justify by declaring a need?”
Aquinas makes the same point in political language. He is not merely saying, “choose good rulers.” He is saying that even rulers must be placed inside a framework that removes the opportunity to become tyrants.
That is the essence of political boundaries.
A person without boundaries becomes vulnerable to manipulation. A government without boundaries becomes what Hobbes famously called the Leviathan: an overwhelming sovereign power justified in the name of order, security, and necessity. Not overnight, but by democratic procedure; by first reinterpreting laws that restrain the state, then by introducing new laws to exempt itself from such boundaries.
Character matters, but 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦.
A virtuous ruler may respect limits voluntarily but a corrupt ruler must be restrained by law. Because these restraints must apply objectively to an office and not subjectively to a person, they apply regardless of the political ideology of the person holding the seat of power.
Aquinas warned us over 750 years ago:
Government, rules and order may be necessary, but that necessity does not erase the need for boundaries, limitations and restrictions on power.
Because once the sovereign power is no longer restrained by law, the citizen is no longer merely governed, but rather managed, harvested and ruled.
