You wanted a definition of the State - I provided you the definition that is most widely used in the 21st century in the Philosophy of Law and Politics. Your segway into the USA, it's political structures and history (Congress, Civil War, Bill of Rights) has nothing to do with what a State is. There's plenty of States that did not have a Bill of Rights/10 amendments to a US Constitution, did not have a civil war and does not have a "Congress".
No, you are talking about voluntary cooperation being the answer. I am saying that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights IS THAT VOLUNTARY COOPERATION
The State cannot do more or less than what is Constitutionally allowed or mandated. You want to do away with the Constitution?
As for voting, voting can not change an immoral action into a moral action. If 3 men are on an island and a woman washes ashore, a vote is taken to make rape legal - the vote comes out 3 favouring and 1 against, rape becomes legal in this little society, but it remains immoral. There's a reason why we have two different words, there's a BIG difference between legal and moral action.
And how would you solve your rape case? Allow the individuals more freedom to decide how to split the spoils? What authority would intervene in in your scenario? I agree with your comparison of moral and legal action. But laws are usually based on morals, whereas without laws, moral action are undefined and subject to personal interpretation. Good luck with that one.
I just argued the case in my example of slavery, where the Federal government was justified in remedial action against slave owners, which is parallel to your rape case.. You keep denying the legitimacy of the Judiciary. Want to do away with the Federal Judiciary also?
Socrates makes it clear you must understand a words specific meaning before attempting to use them to convey meaning through a sentence. I've been very clear, repeatedly so, on what the meaning of a State is. This is to ensure we use the word correctly - the way the law and political profession uses the word. Which is important because this IS the State.
I use the dictionary definition of words and terms, but you make them up as you go along. Example your definition of The State. Not only that, your entire library shrill narratives and complaints about the character and function of the STATE are completely founded on wrong premises.
You can use force to defend yourself.
You can not use force to attack an innocent person - the State can. The State can
force little girls back inside a burning builging for not wearing the 'legal' head dress. The State can
anal rape a man for 'walking funny', the State can waste
$8.5 Trillion dollars in phoney wars, the State
can secretly spy on you, and etc...
No one else can do this.
No other group can do this.
The individual States cannot do this with impunity either. The Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of State's actions (like Brown vs BOE).
And the remedy for replacing a bad Federal Government is by electing good representatives. This evil State you speak of is elected by the people, every two, four, and six years, except the SCOTUS, which must remain removed from politics in the deliberation of national problems in context of the Constitution.
IMO, the problem with the entire system is that Big Business have become persons with unlimited political power. The military industrial complex has enormous influence on functions of the State. They are For Profit corporations which drive wars by any means possible. Same thing with the large unregulated Energy providers, who are desperately seeking to extract every drop of fossil fuel they can get their hands on, if necessary by immoral means (condemnation of your private property after they have polluted your land to begin with).
The LAST thing you should want is a large State. The solution to affordable high quality healthcare is more individual freedom - not less. If you're arguing in FAVOR of having LESS personal freedom, LESS prosperity?!?! - you may want to consider how you were manipulated into thinking like that.
The only way to insure "equal protection under the law" in every corner of the Nation is to have a Supreme Court and a Judiciary with enforcement powers.
It's really quite Orwellian for you to argue you should be less free, for you to argue against your own personal civil liberties - and yet, here we are.
The changes that must occur are many and they are at a structural level: beginning with ending the Patriot Act, Federal Reserve Act, ending the Wars, repealing the 16th amendment, then finally shrinking the role of the State in our lives. We need MORE freedom, not less. You will never hear a politicians talk about giving you more freedom. They will only tell you how you need to lose freedom - what they don't mention is you must lose your prosperity along with it.
You are going after the wrong entity. Fundamentally the State as a system of governance is not the enemy, it is always the temporary elected or appointed individuals in the State who may corrupt the system. The remedy is not to shut down the State, the remedy is to elect intellectually qualified, honorable, and cooperative representatives, who can identify general social problems and devise cost-effective solutions, whose costs are shared by all, because it is to the benefit of all, not just some.
Like the Europeans, who have "freedom from worry" about their healthcare. Apparently their State did something right for them, ask and you'll find confirmation in the statistics..
Anyway, we'll have public healthcare - it will look like public housing and be as useless as a public 'high' schooling degree in 25 years, it's going to cost a lot more and we're going to be poorer, much poorer. We are not going to tackle the problems, we're going to ignore them and complain about the Right and Left instead.
I agree with your consistent argument that there are plenty of bad people. But if you believe that, in the absence of a State governance system, they will magically become voluntary participant in some Utopian society where every individual or group respects the rights and freedoms of others, you are hopelessly naïve.
The ultimate state of the State lies in the oversight by individuals who vote the person who they believe is representative of their point of view, to represent them in addressing common concerns and practical solutions, like maintenance of an interstate commerce and infrastructures, common defense, standardization of currency, measurement, protecting individual rights, lawful possession and use of necessary force when warranted.
Apparently we are not yet civilized enough to function without regulation. That is an undeniable fact.
But if you want to compare the principles on which our system of governance (the State) to other methods, try to visualize some of the alternative forms of societal organization in different countries, like Theocracies, Tribalism, Feudalism, Anarchism. If you can "formulate" a better Constitution and Bill of Rights on which the State of the United States of America is founded, I would read it with interest.
So far you have not made a positive case for a different workable system.
I find it interesting that your complaints about the restrictions on your personal freedoms, while vehemently denying the existence of social problems and commonly shared issues and possible solutions.
If the people in those European Socialists States live longer and in general seem content with the freedoms they have gained from worry about Health Care, how can you then complain about the current system in the US as lacking freedom to choose and privately negotiate for the quality of your life?
I don't understand. Is the American social/economic system worse than the European models, or are you just a spoiled child that stomps on the ground when he doesn't get his way? That is a form of force. A symbolic adversary position. I prefer constructive criticisms of how to improve current laws and regulations, over a constant critique of the way "this country" is going to hell and the good old days of freedom.
The funny thing is that I am as concerned about the direction the State is going as you are. But I do not advocate the abolition of the Federal Government in favor of pure local (tribal) cooperatives. I advocate for certain restrictions on the influence by "privileged groups" on the "voluntary debate and voting" (providing cloture) on National priorities and individual protections.
btw. IMO, the "war on drugs" is on behalf of the Drug manufacturers (private companies), who manufacture the same "illegal" drugs but use the AMA (private organization) to write "legal prescriptions", restricting individual freedom to grow and smoke a joint, no?
Several States have now seen that contradiction and ended their war on drugs, which will relieve an enormous strain on their State's resources, while providing greater individual freedoms. The city of Oakland (state) is joining legal forces with a "responsible and ethical" medical marijuana dispensary against the Federal (State) laws in a Court of Law. When sufficient states will recognize this personal freedom, the congress will debate and change Federal law. That's how it works. That is how wars are avoided. Discussion of grievances and eventual agreement on a functional compromise. This is what Obama is trying to do in the Middle East. A clear case of trying to avoid having to start a war when there exists potential for a peaceful, voluntary agreement, which benefit all parties. A case where the United States of America is trying to avoid using military force and seeks voluntary cooperation to the benefit of all concerned.
Definition of State (n) (political)
1.mostly autonomous region of federal country: an area forming part of a federal country such as the United States or Australia with its own government and legislature and control over most of its own internal affairs
2.country: a country or nation with its own sovereign independent government
3.government: a country's government and those government-controlled institutions that are responsible for its internal administration and its relationships with other countries
Definition of State (n) (philosophical)
Thomas Hobbes[edit]
The pure state of nature or "the natural condition of mankind" was deduced by the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan and in his earlier work On the Citizen.[2] Hobbes argued that all humans are by nature equal in faculties of body and mind (i.e., no natural inequalities are so great as to give anyone a "claim" to an exclusive "benefit"). From this equality and other causes in human nature, everyone is naturally willing to fight one another: so that "during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called warre; and such a warre as is of every man against every man". In this state every person has a natural right or liberty to do anything one thinks necessary for preserving one's own life; and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Leviathan, Chapters XIII–XIV). Hobbes described this natural condition with the Latin phrase bellum omnium contra omnes (meaning war of all against all), in his work De Cive.
Within the state of nature there is neither personal property nor injustice since there is no law, except for certain natural precepts discovered by reason ("laws of nature"): the first of which is "that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it" (Leviathan, Ch. XIV); and the second is "that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this "right to all things"; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself" (loc. cit.). From here Hobbes develops the way out of the state of nature into political society and government, by mutual contracts.
According to Hobbes the state of nature exists at all times among independent countries, over whom there is no law except for those same precepts or laws of nature (Leviathan, Chapters XIII, XXX end). His view of the state of nature helped to serve as a basis for theories of international law and realism.[citation needed]
