• To the extent that the government ceases to function as a republic, serving only a need common to all persons, it tends to lose the respect and loyalty of those who do not identify with some of its purposes, and this loss of respect may hamper the government's effectiveness in its original purpose of securing freedom. This disadvantage applies even if the secondary end can be accomplished without any significant allocation of resources, thus requiring no tax revenues. For instance, a "Family Values" resolution passed by the Cobb County (GA) Commission in 1993, targeted against homosexual members of the community, involved no expenditure of tax funds, but nevertheless created an atmosphere of divisiveness and controversy in which the county government ceased to be perceived as an institution dedicated to common interests of all citizens.

For all of the above reasons, in a free society government needs to be limited to the single function of defending freedom, i. e., maintaining justice. There is another underlying reason why such a government should be limited to this function: in a basic sense, governments cannot create new objective values, except for those few values (specifically, freedom and justice) that by their nature sometimes entail the use of defensive force. In order to clarify this point, let us distinguish between political and nonpolitical values and ends.     

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