I'm not against the government. I'm against this ever-expanding

In an era when the boundaries of power blur and the people’s trust is tested, Alan Wilson, Attorney General of South Carolina, spoke with the conviction of a man who remembers the ancient balance between liberty and authority. He declared:
"I'm not against the government. I'm against this ever-expanding government that doesn't know its limits. And that's how I see the role of the attorney general, as someone in an office that can protect you and defend the Constitution and defend state sovereignty and our individual liberty."

In these words lies both a warning and a vow — a warning against the creeping shadow of unchecked authority, and a vow to uphold the Constitution, that sacred covenant between free men and their government. Wilson’s voice echoes the spirit of the Founders, who understood that power, though necessary, is also dangerous — that the government, if left unrestrained, becomes like the sea: vast, restless, and capable of swallowing the very land it was meant to protect. His words are not rebellion, but remembrance; not hostility, but humility. For he speaks not against governance itself, but against its corruption — when it forgets its purpose and seeks dominion rather than duty.

The meaning of his declaration is rooted in one of the oldest truths of civilization: that freedom cannot exist where power has no limits. The ever-expanding government, as Wilson warns, is not merely a bureaucratic concern — it is a moral one. Each expansion of authority, each intrusion upon individual liberty, begins with noble intent: to secure safety, to ensure order, to promote welfare. Yet over time, such measures, unrestrained by principle, accumulate like stones upon the chest of a sleeping people. The danger is not the presence of government, but the forgetting of its boundaries. Wilson calls us back to the eternal balance — that the purpose of government is not to command the people, but to serve them, and the purpose of law is not to subdue freedom, but to preserve it.

The origin of Wilson’s conviction lies in the very soil of American history, watered by the struggles of those who first drew the blueprint of self-rule. The Constitution, which he swore to defend, was crafted with deliberate limits — dividing powers, restraining ambition, and affirming that sovereignty flows from the people, not from the state. His reverence for state sovereignty and individual liberty echoes the debates of the Founding Fathers — men like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who feared that a central authority might one day grow so vast that it would crush the rights of the states and the spirit of the citizen. Wilson’s warning, therefore, is not new; it is an ancient echo, a continuation of the same eternal struggle between liberty and control.

History bears witness to the truth of his caution. When power exceeds its limits, it does not merely threaten law — it corrupts the soul of a nation. Consider the tale of Ancient Rome, that mighty republic which once championed freedom under law. In the name of safety, it expanded its bureaucracy, centralized its authority, and drowned its citizens in decrees. Each emperor justified new powers as “necessary” — until the people awoke one day to find their republic had become an empire, their voice silenced, their destiny no longer their own. What began as the protection of liberty ended in the suffocation of it. This is the cycle Wilson warns against: the quiet expansion of authority under the banner of benevolence, until freedom itself becomes the casualty of progress.

Yet Wilson’s vision is not one of despair. His faith in the office of the Attorney General — the defender of law and the people — reveals his belief in restoration. For even when government forgets its limits, there remain guardians who remember. The attorney general, as he describes it, stands not merely as a lawyer for the state, but as a sentinel for liberty — the protector of citizens against overreach, and the defender of the Constitution when others seek to bend it for convenience. His calling, therefore, is not to serve power, but to restrain it; not to enforce the will of rulers, but to preserve the rights of the ruled. In this, his mission becomes not political, but moral — an act of service to both law and conscience.

Wilson’s words invite each of us to reflect upon our own role in this grand compact between citizen and state. For the preservation of liberty is not the duty of one office alone, but of all who live under its light. Each generation must renew the boundaries of power, must watch with vigilance as the lines between governance and domination blur. To love one’s country is not to surrender to authority without question, but to hold it accountable with courage and reason. The people must remember, as Wilson reminds, that freedom dies not by the sword, but by slow surrender — the quiet consent to an ever-expanding power that promises protection at the price of independence.

So let this teaching be spoken from age to age: Government is the servant of liberty, not its master. Support it when it serves justice, resist it when it forgets humility. Let every attorney, every citizen, and every leader remember that the Constitution is not parchment to be interpreted at whim, but a covenant to be guarded with fidelity. And when authority grows restless and seeks to reach beyond its proper realm, let the voice of the people rise — calm but unyielding — to say, as Alan Wilson did: “I am not against the government. I am against the government that forgets its limits.”

Thus ends the teaching: Freedom endures not through rebellion alone, but through vigilance — through men and women who remember that power, like fire, must be kept within its hearth, lest it consume the house it was built to warm.