CAI Engaging Citizenship Luncheon — 'How Regulatory Capture and a Corporate State Make Americans Sick and Sad'

Join the Center for American Institutions for a lunch conversation about the implications of regulatory capture and a corporate state featuring Jay W. Richards. 

"The best purpose for government is to maintain the rule of law—to preserve and defend those conditions which allow individuals and families to pursue lives of freedom and virtue. Since I have the right to protect myself and my family from theft, murder, and enslavement at the hands of others, I can delegate the defense of that right to the government. Therefore, when the government protects the life, liberty, and property of my family, it allows me to be more rather than less free.

Thus we have the need for laws against such things as murder, theft, and fraud. They’re not much different from the laws inscribed on the second tablet of the Ten Commandments—don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t lie. The problem comes when the rules begin to violate, rather than protect, my rights to life, liberty, and property.

Even rules with a good purpose—such as protecting the environment or defending us from terrorists—can be ill-conceived, putting in place too many limits at too great a cost. Some even can reduce our safety or health even when they’re meant to protect it." Jay W. Richards, "The Economy Hits Home: Regulations", June 2010 

Jay W. Richards, PhD, is Director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing and the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.  

Jay is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); The Human Advantage; Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; The Hobbit Party with Jonathan Witt; and Eat, Fast, Feast. His most recent book, with James Robison, is Fight the Good Fight: How an Alliance of Faith and Reason Can Win the Culture War.