The Founders designed the representative republic established by the Constitution, with its division of powers among various branches of government and its institutional checks and balances, to control factions and keep them from turning government from a protector of rights to a conveyor of advantage. They saw that a government dominated by factions would not only violate the natural rights of its citizens but allow some to enhance their own well-being at the expense of the whole. To do so insulates that authority from the consent of the citizenry. The entire federal regulatory apparatus the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Communication Commission, and so on can legitimately have enforcement power but not the rule-making functions that now form their primary activity. People have natural rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness rights that are antecedent to government and do not depend on any kind of social agreement, empirical investigation, or philosophical inquiry.
People devise governments to protect their rights.
Government should be democratic, acting only with the consent of the governed. Each level of government should do only what is legitimate and cannot be done at lower levels of government. The lowest level should do only what cannot be done by the people without serious risk of harm. Institutional constraints are required to prevent government from allowing factions to profit at the expense of the whole. Regulations may be imposed only by vote of a representative legislature.