Source: Liberalism.org
by Michael C Munger
“The state should not be dismissed as evil, but neither should it be romanticized as inherently good, a focus of moral value in and of itself. There are legitimate and difficult questions about whether there is a collective ‘will’ that the state discovers and enacts. The most plausible, and modest, claim is that people use the technology of ‘state power’ to provide mutual protection and achieve shared goals. The alternatives to this modest view of the state are a wide and haphazard range of different moral and practical collectivisms, imposed by central authorities. We can agree that the state must have police authority, but endowing the state with moral authority is simply incompatible with liberalism.” (09/09/26)