" the City is not a simple partnership; it is a partnership of partnerships, each of which already has a pattern of its own, a pattern that government did not give it. These partnerships best flourish in that larger partnership which is the City, and law merely assures the background conditions—the most important of which is simple justice—they need in order to do so. Thus the proper aim of the state is not to do everything itself but to support a life which was there before it. "

― J. Budziszewski , Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law