Replies

One has to view the government as an institution that secures certain rights at the expense of other rights. In an anarchy, you can go around, killing/stealing/raping/burning, etc. You have infinite "rights:" the right to life, the right to kill, the right to your possessions, the right to steal, etc. Many of these "rights" are incompatible with each other, and hence they are tenuous; my right to life would be in conflict with someone else's right to kill. A government is there to secures everyone's right to life at the expense of everyone's "right" to kill, in order to maintain stability.

I have to somewhat disagree with this, as the Founders never insinuated there was ever a 'right to kill' like they did a person's 'right to live'. Our rights are not granted by the Constitution; they exist independent of any human institution, the Constitution merely lists *some* of them. I would suggest that a 'right to kill' doesn't exist, where we define kill as murder. Obviously, a person also has the right to use deadly force to defend themselves, but that's a different matter. In this framework, Anarchy exists when there is no coherent force tasked with preventing the infringement of individual rights; it does not constitute a state in which there is suddenly this 'right to kill, rape, pillage, and burn'. You are, however, absolutely correct in that those things would happen in a state of Anarchy. This is why the Declaration of Independence states that to secure our rights, governments are instituted among men by consent of the governed. This is why government exists, period: to secure individual rights from infringement.