Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O'Reilly recently defended a piece of legislation being debated by stating; "When one thinks about it, all law and all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. This is exactly what we are doing here. We are restricting freedom, but we are doing it for the common good."  She went on to state; "If a person's views on other people's identities make their lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms for the common good."

A fairly reliable test for whether or not government should have a particular power or authority is whether or not you would want your worst enemy to have that power or authority over you.  This illustrates the idea that we often conflate the government with some wiser, more benevolent entity kindly watching out for us all with equanimity and love. In reality government is nothing more than other people - flawed, fallible, sometimes mature, often petty and rarely wise people.