What right does the government have?

Now the problem that political theory must solve was expressed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in as distinct terms as anyone could wish. At the beginning of the Social Contract he says, 'Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains . . . . How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.'
The chains are still upon us. Although for a century after the French and American Revolutions the chains of government were relaxed, the nations are now reverting to the ways of Louis XIV. The executive power is eclipsing the legislative branch of government and regulations never enacted by Congress, plus the violence and power of the labor unions, have left little liberty to the owners of business. And not only the owners of business; this very month of October 1965, the President and those Members of Congress subservient to labor are making a great effort to extinguish through all the United States the right to work without submitting to extortion. Liberals make a great profession of civil rights, but they want to abolish the right to work and make a job a privilege to be granted by an autocratic union. similarly, when men are put out of work by direct government competition, they begin to ask what right a government has to do this. The broader underlying question is, What right does government have? It makes neither any theoretical difference, nor any practical difference, whether the government is an absolute monarchy or operates in the form of an elected officialdom. In both cases some people are exerting coercion on others. - Gordon H. Clark, Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark