300 years ago the argument could have been made that a country with a government like our founding fathers brought forth was an impossibility. Look at what we had in the late 1800s to the early 1900s and it takes very little imagination to see that we could have a sustainable minarchy without perfect citizenry.
Now, who's living in a fantasy?
If a people never learn that the sovereignty of a government
can never be more than the extension of the sovereignty of the individuals who consent to be governed by it; if they believe that they have the right to force people who have violated no one's rights, to abide by laws that prohibit them from exercising their right to self defence and to travel freely past artificial boundaries called borders, except under terms dictated to them by a protection racket called the state; if they cannot distinguish legitimate authority from extortion and terror; if they cannot understand nor value their most basic rights, then why would you expect them to value all the other rights that are dependant upon them?
Simply put: Americans were not ready for liberty. Not understanding the full value of nor the basis for their rights, they took whatever rights that they could exercise for granted and allowed them to be gradually eroded in the name of any popular cause that came along. Even minarchists are willing to compromise their rights in the name of pragmatism and are willing to embrace what they label as "necessary evil".
Minarchy may seem very comfortable, especially compared with what we are forced to endure today, but the principled would not be satisfied with it for long and the unprincipled would not sustain it for long.
You accuse others of conflating government and state. But in fact no is the least confused when someone says "The government" that they are talking about anything but the state. No is getting all muddled up and confused and asking themselves, "Gee, is he referring to the 'governor' on an automobile's throttle, or the way a business 'governs' its activities?"
Yes, the term "the government" is understood to be the state, as opposed to other forms of governance. Show me where I said otherwise.
My point is that civil government is a business enterprise and politicians are political entrepreneurs. They will act to give the market whatever it demands in the various areas of civil life, be it monopolistic tyranny or liberty.
It is the state you want to do away with and it is a state that minarchist wants to keep. That makes you an anarchist. Treating words as if definitions need observe no rules is just a kind of anarchy in logic and shows no respect for reason.
an⋅archy
| 1. | a state of society without government or law. |
| 2. | political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy. |
| 3. | a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society. |
| 4. | confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith. |
Every definition here, makes a lie of your claim. Not one mentions the state nor "the government".
This is the second time in one post that you have caused me to show you the dictionary. Are you playing a dishonest game of semantics or are you just making assertions without bothering to verify them. Is this some sort of debating tactic to make me look like I get my philosophy from a dictionary? Are your arguments based more on fear of being wrong than a desire to understand?- because it's beginning to look that way.
Why not allow your Objectivism to be your religion in the good sense of the word. For your own sake, don't let it degenerate into dogma.
I am very likely wrong about many things that I believe. Any time that I'm corrected, I feel nothing but gratitude toward the person who has taken the trouble to make me more knowledgeable and/or wiser. I'm very careful not to let the healthy fear that my defense of an idea does not do the idea justice degenerate into the mind destroying fear that I may be wrong.
