What's the connection between social contract theory and a limited government?

0:06The basic idea is that there is a contract or a compact or a covenant, a deal, an arrangement, an understanding, a reciprocity between the governors and the governed. The governed have certain duties to just authority, the authority exercised by those in office, but those in office have a certain obligation in how they rule to the people, those who are governed. It was, I believe, Madison himself again who said that, "The first obligation of government is to get control of those over whom they are governing, and the second is to get control of itself." Now why does government have to control itself?

0:53Government has an obligation. It's inside of the contract or compact to the people to govern in a certain way, to govern justly, to govern in the interest of the people, in the public interest, not in the interest of any narrow tribe or clan or group or party but in the interest of the people. It's the government's obligation. Its end of that social contract is to pursue the common good. The people, in turn, have an obligation to respect and honor and to live under the law, the laws made by the government. They may sometimes not like the law, but nevertheless, so long as the law is not gravely unjust, they have an obligation to live by the law. Now if the government becomes tyrannical, what happens then? The American founders had a view about this. It's what justified

1:42their revolution. There's a big debate about whether they were right or wrong about this, but they thought that the British government, that the King and the Parliament, had become tyrannical in their ruling over the Americans. When a government becomes tyranical, it doesn't fulfill its end of the bargain, its end of the contract, then the people have a right of revolution, a right to overthrow the government. They no longer have the obligation that they would otherwise have to obey the laws made by the governors.