As traditional conservatives, John Galt Society members believe passionately in these core principles:
• Minimal government
Left to its own devices, government grows. As it grows, it becomes more expensive, more intrusive, and more burdensome on the population it serves. We believe that government only rarely offers the best solution to the problems that face us. The private sector — including not only businesses, but community groups, guilds and churches — often provides more efficient and appropriate solutions.
• Maximum liberty
The critical function of government is to protect the individual, God-given rights and liberties of the people. That necessitates law enforcement, the courts and national defense. These tools must never be used to attack religious freedom, property rights, freedom of expression or other constitutional liberties. Individuals never forfeit these rights unless, after due process, they’ve been judged to have destroyed the rights of others.
• Accountability
No one is entitled to political power. Those who are granted political power by the voters must be accountable to the people they are entrusted to serve. Furthermore, President Donald Trump was absolutely correct in his evaluation of the entrenched “Administrative State,” bureaucrats who wield excessive political power over the people but are not elected by the people. This political reality is a threat to the liberty of the electorate because there is little or no accountability to voters.
• Transparency
Government activity must always be open to public scrutiny. The botched property re-assessment of 2016 in Blair County is a clear local example of how secrecy in outsourcing leads to terrible outcomes. County Commissioners, frustrated with the inefficiency of our tax assessment office, secretly outsourced control of that office to a private company in 2007. The contract, never offered for public review, allowed the company to entrench itself in the Courthouse. From inside government, it then lobbied for re-assessment and no-bid contract to conduct it.
• Non-interference in the marketplace
Government meddling in the marketplace rarely produces good outcomes. Genuine conservatives not only resist government tinkering with marketplace functions through over-regulation, they also oppose government picking favorites in the private sector. Worse yet is when government sets up pseudo-private entities compete within the marketplace, or even control it, as we’ve seen in Blair County with the Alleghenies Broadband Inc.
Selective outsourcing of government functions to private companies may seem like a “conservative” idea. After all, the private sector is usually more efficient than government. But outsourcing without an open competitive bidding process subject to public scrutiny is far-too-often associated with corruption and injustice.
• Low taxation
Taxation is necessary to fund those functions of government that should never be privatized — law enforcement, the courts and national defense. Since all taxation takes resources from those who produce them, tax policy should be fair, limited, and responsible. Increased taxes inevitably syphon revenue out of the marketplace and into government coffers. This transfer of wealth has a very real and negative effect on the prosperity and liberty of taxpayers.