Why Do We Need Government?
Joseph Sobran - Mr. Sobran once thought that government was necessary. No more. May his wisdom spread far and wide. [jomama]
The other day I was ticketed, and my car briefly impounded, when a policeman noticed that I was driving with a cracked windshield. My car had passed the required safety inspection and had the required sticker before some vandal had thrown rocks at it, so I thought I was legal. I wasn't hurting or threatening anyone; I posed no danger I could see. The cop was as polite as a man with a pistol can be, but as he ordered the car towed away I asked him quietly, "Just who are you protecting from me?\u201d The answer was a vague mumble about "the public."
Later I joked to friends that I'd been "carjacked." An armed man had seized my car, I explained. Of course he had a badge, a uniform, and some sort of "law" on his side, so I, not he, was the criminal. Heaven help me if I'd tried to defend my property. Self-defense would have been an even more serious offense. By submitting to force, I confined the evil to a mere nuisance. This time.
Carjacking or impoundment? We now have two vocabularies for wrongs, depending on whether private persons or government agents commit them. This is the difference between mass murder and national defense. Between extortion and taxation. Between counterfeiting and inflation. And so on. Other examples will occur to the astute reader.
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