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We haven't seen transparency in this administration, however.
It would be nice to hear government officials say certain items are on a need-to-know basis, rather than outright lying about them.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Thank you.
Jan
Rand, in "The Nature of Government," held that men need a publicly supported police force, military service, and judiciary to manage the use of force in retaliation and to protect individual rights. She showed exasperation with those who in her view accepted the statists' idea that policing and so on were no different from running a municipal power station or other "public utilities," and then suggested replacing the police completely with private contract security forces, replacing the armies and navy with mercenaries and sea raiders (think Ragnar Danneskjöld as an admiral instead of a mere captain), and law courts with private arbiters.
And for all the exasperation she expressed, Mulligan's Valley/Atlantis/Galt's Gulch had no state of any kind. They did not have police. The only military they had was Ragnar Danneskjöld's never-named ship, plus the air-and-land militia Ragnar hastily assembled to rescue John Galt from Project F. And instead of a judiciary, they had Judge Narragansett as a contract arbiter and surrogate (wills, etc.).
Of course the only reason that could ever have succeeded, was that residency in Galt's Gulch was by invitation only.
What he was getting at was that when people self-govern (ie control themselves to live moral lives), you have a greatly reduced need for a police force in the first place.
We should want the least amount of evil possible. But someone's evil is another's good.
Also an expansion on my first comment; the term "necessary" presupposes a purpose. A necessary means to achieve one's purpose. Government, Paine is saying, is a necessary means of achieve a civil society. As an
Objectivist I hold that it is not necessary for the government to behave evilly to achieve a civil society -- a good means is available and necessary to achieve a good purpose.