All nonstate threats to life, liberty, and property appear to be relatively petty and therefore can be dealt with. Only states can pose truly massive threats, and sooner or later the horrors with which they menace mankind invariably come to pass.

To continue on the road we Americans have traveled for the past century is ultimately to deliver ourselves completely into the hands of an unlimited government. We can have a free society or a welfare state. We cannot have both.

The state is the most destructive institution human beings have ever devised - a fire that, at best, can be controlled for only a short time before it o'erleaps it's improvised confinements and spreads its flames far and wide.

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy's mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state's mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

But politicians who talk about failed policies are just blowing smoke. Government policies succeed in doing exactly what they are supposed to do: channeling resources bilked from the general public to politically organized and influential interests groups.

If anarchists are idealists, they may simply be likened to someone who finds himself swimming in a cesspool and, rather than paddling about looking for the area with the least amount of floating faeces, seeks to climb out of the pool completely.

Abetted by misguided or co-opted intellectuals, the rulers weave a cloak of legitimacy to disguise their theft and hence to ease their extraction of wealth from the rightful owners.