Limited Government Nepal

Their achievements were the product of individual genius, of strongly held minority views, of a social climate permitting variety and diversity." (Prof. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago (1962) pp 3-4).

To be legitimate, government's powers must be grounded in the consent of the governed.

There have been six constitutions promulgated in Nepal since 1940s. LGNepal believes that these constitutions failed because every other Constitution always directed less attention to individual liberty and limited government. The civil liberties of the people stem from the right to the property. It means resources at hand make people less vulnerable to exploitation.

LGNepal believes on market liberalism. It combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties. A just society is possible only if the market forces play independent roles. It cures the discrimination; we oppose the state-sponsored discrimination in any form.

We are all free to pursue happiness as we wish, by our own lights, provided we respect the equal rights of others to do the same. There, in a nutshell, is the basic moral order. It was captured in large measure by the classic common law, grounded in property and contract—''property'' referring broadly, as John Locke put it, to ''Lives, Liberties, and Estates.''

It is with that moral vision in mind that we create government to secure those rights. But not any government will do. To be legitimate, government's powers must be grounded in the consent of the governed. Thus, legitimate government is twice limited—by its ends, which any of us would have a right to pursue was there no government, and by its means, which must be consented to. There are no other rights but individual rights, and these rights are inviolable - which essentially means that they are carved in stone. That each individual has the right to exercise sole dominion over her/his life, and to live in whatever manner she/he may choose, so long as she/he does not violate the equal rights of others. Each individual must have the right to self-determination, the necessary extension of the right to life, which should render illegal any attempt to aggress against any individual or to seize the product of his/her labor.

Individuals enjoy unlimited set of the rights. The right is a faculty of doing something, of omitting or refusing to do something or of claiming something. Rights are moral principles sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. Every right we have emanates from our right to private property. In this sense, "private property" means not only the right to one's home and land, but also the right to own the product of one's labor. James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution, wrote in 1789, "A man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."

In jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. Compare with privilege, or a thing to which one has a just claim. Rights serve as rules of interaction between people, and, as such, they place constraints and obligations upon the actions of individuals or groups (for example, if one has a right to life, this means that others do not have the liberty to kill him).

Most modern conceptions of rights are Universalist and egalitarian — in other words, equal rights are granted to all people. There are two main modern conceptions of rights: on the one hand, the idea of natural rights holds that there is a certain list of rights enshrined in nature that cannot be legitimately modified by any human power. On the other hand, the idea of legal rights holds that rights are human constructs, created by society, enforced by governments and subject to change.

Rights can be divided into individual rights that are held by citizens as individuals (or corporations) recognised by the legal system and collective rights, held by an ensemble of citizens or a subgroup of citizens who have a certain characteristic in common. In some cases there can be an amount of tension between individual and collective rights.

In other cases, the view of collective and individual rights held by one group can come into sharp and bitter conflict with the view of rights held by another group. For instance compare Manifest destiny with Trail of Tears. Rights have the economic purpose of enabling each individual to optimize his or her capacity to make a unique contribution others cannot make.

Pragmatically, we cannot ignore that there should not exist any system of rule. What we believe is a system should exist but at the minimalist nature, that can retain the contract between the citizens, an impartial renitence.

The rule of law is a fundamental component of free society and is defined broadly as the principle that all members of society -- both citizens and rulers -- are bound by a set of clearly defined and universally accepted laws. In a free society, the rule of law is manifested in an independent judiciary, a free press and a system of checks and balances on leaders through free elections and separation of powers among the branches of government.

The rule of law holds that if our relationships with each other and with the state are governed by a set of rules, rather than by a group of individuals, we are less likely to fall victim to authoritarian rule. The rule of law calls for both individuals and the government to submit to the law's supremacy.