Without moral limits liberty degenerates into license and license turns inevitably toward destructive ends. A Constitutional Structure Keeping these conditions in mind, it is instructive to inquire into the kind of social structure which will foster liberty. In order to insure the first condition of liberty, a constitutional and legal framework must be erected and upheld, its principal end being to guard against all coercive challenges to personal liberty - whether from individuals, institutions, foreign armies, or from the state itself. By itself alone a constitutionally limited government will never suffice to insure the survival of human liberty. This is because government cannot bring about the second and third conditions of liberty discussed above-the power and means necessary for positive action and the moral limits within which liberty operates.
Government can be an arbiter, but it can never be a provider.
It can enforce protective laws, but it cannot produce virtuous people or act as a higher moral authority. A cycle of futility results whenever the state attempts to provide the resources and human energy necessary for progress. Every resource a government provides to the individuals in a society must first be taken from those individuals. Because the process of injecting them back into the society will always incur a net loss, the result over time will be economic stagnation, declining initiative in society as a whole, depletion of real resources, debasement of currency, decline in productive capital, and the disintegration of social cohesiveness. The end of this cycle of futility is the dependency of the people on the government and the death of liberty.