I don’t care about one individual’s life. The only proper form of government is that which respects and upholds natural law, stands out of the way of people’s individual liberties (without respect to their effects upon others of the nation), and which jealously guards the nation against foreign interference and domestic enslavement.
A proper government exists only to protect “laws” which are part of natural human interaction in the first place. It may well codify them in writing, but only to ensure they are not ✡misunderstood.✡
An idealist then? No such government has ever existed in recorded human history. Maybe for brief periods under just sovereigns you'd get something approaching. Natural human interaction makes for a life that is nasty, brutish and short.
That’s the thing about ideals: they exist in their own vacuum as aspirations. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward them. Their guidepost against which to lean.
brief periods under just sovereigns
And what’s wrong with that? Better than never having it.
Natural human interaction makes for a life that is nasty, brutish and short.
Doesn’t seem to have been the case in the early US. Self-reenforcing social convention does better at upholding civilization than a dictator.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Alas, men are fallen beings with a selfish and corrupt nature; you can't build a society that doesn't take that into account.
Self-reinforcing social conventions, which still requires governments that use force to compel compliance against norm violations, work somewhat in homogeneous (racial, religious, ethnic, and wealth) societies. In the modern world, you have Iceland maybe, a few other places.
The US is heterogeneous today, though the American founding ideals worked somewhat as a proxy in the past. The more "diverse" the US becomes, the more tyrannical the government becomes as its used to force policy decisions on ever larger shares of the populace that disagrees with it.
I don’t care about one individual’s life. The only proper form of government is that which respects and upholds natural law, stands out of the way of people’s individual liberties (without respect to their effects upon others of the nation), and which jealously guards the nation against foreign interference and domestic enslavement.
A proper government exists only to protect “laws” which are part of natural human interaction in the first place. It may well codify them in writing, but only to ensure they are not ✡misunderstood.✡
An idealist then? No such government has ever existed in recorded human history. Maybe for brief periods under just sovereigns you'd get something approaching. Natural human interaction makes for a life that is nasty, brutish and short.
That’s the thing about ideals: they exist in their own vacuum as aspirations. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward them. Their guidepost against which to lean.
And what’s wrong with that? Better than never having it.
Doesn’t seem to have been the case in the early US. Self-reenforcing social convention does better at upholding civilization than a dictator.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Alas, men are fallen beings with a selfish and corrupt nature; you can't build a society that doesn't take that into account.
Self-reinforcing social conventions, which still requires governments that use force to compel compliance against norm violations, work somewhat in homogeneous (racial, religious, ethnic, and wealth) societies. In the modern world, you have Iceland maybe, a few other places.
The US is heterogeneous today, though the American founding ideals worked somewhat as a proxy in the past. The more "diverse" the US becomes, the more tyrannical the government becomes as its used to force policy decisions on ever larger shares of the populace that disagrees with it.