The state is almost universally considered an institution of social service

• Some venerate the state as the culmination of society

• Others regard it as an amiable though often inefficient organization

• Almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind

"We are the government"

• If that is true, then anything a government does to an individual is voluntary on the part of the individual concerned

• If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that “we owe it to ourselves”

We are not the government, the government is not us

• The government does not in any accurate sense represent the majority of the people

the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area

• It is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

• State obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet.