To keep us safe? There’s no limit to how safe you can make someone. The American government’s job is to preserve my liberty.
“Safe” was a poor choice of words — I was posting in a hurry.
To clarify, I meant the type of safety that allows for the sort of stability which makes liberty possible. It’s nigh impossible to be free without order of some sort.
It is obviously easy to take that too far, however. I was not supporting the nanny state but merely pointing out that the very laws which underlie a nanny state can easily be turned against the people themselves.