Government Force

"The irony is so thick you could choke on it."
--Mitch Leary (In the Line of Fire)

The core competence of government is force. Government either forces individuals to do things that they don't want to do, or it forces them to not do things that they want to do.

In a free society, some amount of government is necessary to help individuals protect their property rights (broadly construed to mean life, liberty, as well as property). Absent some degree of government force in this regard, people would not be free, as they would spend much their time fending off those who want to appropriate their property.

However, when the scope of government moves beyond the protection of an individual's natural rights and into the realm of confiscating property for the benefit of special interests, then government force becomes a threat, rather than a facilitator, of freedom. Government force comes for sale, and the State essentially becomes a mercenary for hire.

A large group of people currently proclaim that they are peaceful and loving while labelling others as violent and hateful. However, many in this group actively recruit government as their strong armed agent to advance their interests. As such, this 'peace-loving' group routinely sanctions violent acts on others via government force.

I often wonder whether these people recognize the irony. Are they being disingenuous? Perhaps they are delusional or ignorant of their duplicity.

Why should it be surprising that those partial to liberty often use words like 'threat,' 'enemy,' 'defend,' 'attack' when expressing thoughts about this situation? Such rhetoric has a long history, btw--dating back to the likes of Jefferson and earlier. Government force and those who sanction it for personal gain are adversarial to freedom. Imagery of conflict and violence express the situation accurately.

As such, it seems straightforward to posit that the use of violent imagery/rhetoric is positively related to the intensity of government force exerted on the people.

Such a hypothesis would attract a decent amount of confirmatory support from our empirical situation, I think.