Paraphrase of one of President Washington's quotes: "A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master." I also like one of his other quotes: "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is force."

Thomas Jefferson probably made the most articulate description of the role of government in civilized life.

1. All humans are equal.

2. They have certain rights none can take from them.

3. Those rights include: life, liberty and property.

4. Government exists to secure those rights. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

5. When a government defeats that purpose, the people have the right to change it.

Government starts out protecting people, but degenerates quickly into a tool used by the rich, powerful, and morally corrupt people to enslave the other people.

I'd argue that it is man's lust for power that is the most dangerous threat. Government simply is - it is the AGENDA of the government that determine's it's course and danger to it's citizens.

The 1959 book The Nature of Man and His Government
by Robert LeFevre is excellent reading for Objectivists.

The introduction says: “Here is Robert LeFevre's classic argument (1959) for a purely free society, the essay that made him a leading, if controversial, spokesman for the libertarian position on government and society in the 2nd half of the twentieth century. He argues that government is in its essence a violation of rights, one that makes life brutal, poor, and short.

He demonstrates that no government anywhere has lived up to its basic promises, and calls on all people to contribute to building a new kind of freedom.”

Government / Legality is the bane of the Just.

True. Your post immediately caused me to think of the Mad Max movies.
Another thought now hits dino. According to some History Channel show, Europeans of the Dark Ages all expected to die by an act of violence.
What a way to live down on the the farm for having to always keep an eye over your shoulder.

Great analogy.

I am amazed that often when I share these I make "contact" with the other side. Today, this one, caught the interest of a union trucker-went to high school with- he wrote on my my timeline-"right between the eyes true." give me a thousand Ayn Rand memes :)

Governments are like fire. Useful, even necessary and with great potential. Mankind has learned how to work with fire, but we are still to immature as a whole when it comes to governments.

Truthfully, I don't any of us would survive, let alone thrive in the absence of government.

I would say that even if it is a good government which protects its citizens, any government is still the most dangerous threat to man's rights

I'm not sure that I agree with the quote as written.

The organizing principle of any society is the protection of the weak, at at some point we're all weak. So stated another way, it's for our mutual protection. A leader is necessary to determine how this is to be accomplish; however, it MUST be with the consent and NOT the coercion of the governed. So I would amend the quote to read, "an UNCONTROLLED government is the dangerous threat to mans' rights..."