Thomas Jefferson did not always live up to his ideals, but he was a master at articulating the goals of good government in defending the rights of man.

In considering what kind of government I would like to live under, considering why people need government, I concluded, to provide structure under which people can live together without killing each other — the law of the jungle.

Jefferson wrote: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted of men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

In the current political turmoil, it is useful to apply this standard. The Republican Party in particular is again trying to control people’s moral choices by legislation, limiting the right of people to make moral and religious choices for themselves.

It presumes on the part of people who can win elections, presumably a majority of citizens — although with the flaws in our election system, this is not necessarily the case — the right to dictate to people with whom they disagree, prohibitions on choices they reserve to themselves.

These laws, often based on religious teachings of particular groups but not universally shared, force everyone to submit to their religious or moral biases, but do not inflict on them a corresponding obligation in regard to other people’s opinions.

This is not new, not even in our own history. Our home state of Massachusetts, which began its European occupation as a theocracy, is famously remembered for the Salem witch trials, in which a number of women (the powerless segment of society), were killed in the name of the law and justice.

One hundred years ago, we have the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the “production, sale, and transportation of alcohol,” followed by the 21st Amendment repealing it after it was found to be a disaster.

The effect of legislating morality is always followed by oppressive punishment, leading to violence, and the more enforcement, the more violent a government becomes.

In Iran, a woman died at the hands of the government for the crime of not wearing her government-prescribed clothing the right way, as determined by the morality police.

Legislating morality is to enslave otherwise law-abiding citizens, making them enemies of their government, weakening the union that should exist among a free people under a truly democratic government.

Judith Truesdell lives in Greenfield.