Tenet II of the Four

II

Power

Bow to none.

We neither respect nor require any authority. Deference is earned by being right and revoked by being wrong; titles, offices, robes, and majorities confer nothing. Whatever authority exists is lent by the Force — which is to say, by reality — and reality delegates none of it permanently to anyone. Government is the largest claimant of authority it does not have, so it receives this tenet's sharpest application: we tolerate it in two functions only — the Shield (defense of the whole people against external threat) and the Arbiter (the peaceful resolution of disputes among persons and the protection of their safety) — and we tolerate them as functions, never revere them as authority. Beyond the Shield and the Arbiter, order arises from free people. Every power granted past those two functions is a standing threat to conscience and non-interference.

From the thinkers

"When the best ruler's work is done, the people all say: we did it ourselves." — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, ch. 17
"A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)
"The scope of government must be limited. Its major function must be to protect our freedom both from the enemies outside our gates and from our fellow-citizens: to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets." — Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

From the story-cycle

Qui-Gon Jinn repeatedly told the Jedi Council it was wrong, and the story proved him right and the Council blind. The Jedi bound themselves in service to the Galactic Republic — and Chancellor Palpatine manufactured a war, took emergency powers, and with Order 66 turned the Republic's own army on its guardians in a single hour, then crowned himself Emperor while the Senate applauded. Neither the council of the faith nor the government it served held authority the Force did not lend; the order that revered both was destroyed by both. This is why we tolerate the Shield and the Arbiter, and revere neither.