I make the difference between government and the State. "Government" protects life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, just as is written in the Declaration of Independence (it comes from John Locke, who wrote the proper function of government was to protect life, liberty and property).
As an aside (but not that much of one) Locke put life first, then liberty, then property. I think he did that on purpose, because without life first, you can have no liberty and property. With liberty second and property third, that means your life and liberty are more important than property. For years it was ruled by incompetent courts that property was more important than life and liberty.
When government goes beyond the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (and property) then it turns into what is called the State, which is a monster that always destroys.
Franz Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock wrote some famous books about the difference between the two. The first they called the Economic Means (free trade and persuasion) and the second the Economic Means (theft and force).
The Political Means of the State is based on coercion, stealing, murder and lies, and the Economic Means is based persuasion, liberty and the free market. They are mutually exclusive, and the biggest problem is the average person not only can’t tell the difference, they think the Political Means is a good thing.
Oppenheimer wrote, "There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. . . . I … call one's own labor and the … exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the ‘economic means’ for the satisfaction of need while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the ‘political means.’ . . . The State is an organization of the political means."
Or as Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his book, Adventures of Ideas, about the difference between persuasion and force: "The creation of the world - said Plato - is the victory of persuasion over force...Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals..."
That's a profound statement by Whitehead. The more force, the less civilization and the more chaotic of a social order.
What all of that means for me is that I am a minarchist. I am not an anarchist, all of whom I consider leftists who don't understand human nature. But then, no leftist does. If they did, then they wouldn't be leftists.
Of course, as always, the eternal problem is how to keep the government from turning into the State. No one has ever come up with a cure for that disease, which is why every government in the history of the world has morphed into the State and then collapsed, sometimes taking civilization with it. Civilization always pops back up, sometimes after a lot of problems.
As always, everyone complains about the State's intrusion into their lives, then immediately turns around and votes into office the same people oppressing them. It doesn't make me think much of the average person. The Founding Fathers were onto something, since all of them despised democracy.
They were also onto something by trying to set up a government that was as small as possible. I am especially intrigued by the phrase, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." (I do not know why it was not written, "Life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness").
As far as I'm concerned, it should have been, "life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of well-being."
When the government protects your life, your liberty (and your property), then you have the necessary conditions to pursue well-being. This means you can only pursue well-being with the smallest necessary government, and when the government goes beyond your life, liberty and property it can only damage your pursuit of happiness (more accurately, eudaimonia or "well-being" or "flourishing").
What every one of the Bills of Rights has in common is freedom from the State. The right to free speech, the right to defend yourself, the right to having your property or you free from being searched...and so on.
Apparently people continually vote fascist politicians into office, who take away people's freedoms, because they think they are voting for security. What a bunch of clueless fools! As Somerset Maugham (among many other people) noticed, "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose that freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose those too."
Obviously, there are two contradictory drives in people: one for freedom and one to be a slave (which the slave-minded confuse with "security").
Logically, the desire for security is the desire to be a slave, which means a bloated, powerful, perpetually-meddling State, which means you lose your liberty and property (and sometimes your life). Then you lose your ability to develop your talents and therefore seek your well-being.
Those who seek and gain power in the State always think they know what it best for you. In other words, you can't freely seek your well-being. Those who think they are intellectually and morally superior to you believe they have the right to impose their views on you, by force.
Everything the State gets involved in, it damages and destroys. The schools. The relationships between men and men. The economy. Everything.
In a sentence, the purpose of the State is to destroy you, under the guise of helping and protecting you. And the average nitwit always falls for it. It's been the history of the world.
Then, as always, when the State gets too big and crushing, people want their freedom again...and the State falls. Sometimes, after a lot of death and destruction.
Things would be a lot easier if people, like Barney Fife, just nipped it in the bud.
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