Secular Café: Protection welfarism?

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Protection welfarism? Mar 29th 2012, 05:33 I've often seen arguments against social programs and welfare statism, and I will concede that governments can't do everything and that it's not worth it for them to try. But there's something that can be constructed as a social program, as welfare statism, that's not often described as that: government protection. That is, protection by government military and police forces. In fact, one can make lots of anti-welfare-state arguments against government military and police forces. Governments can never do anything right. Private sector good, public sector bad. Thus, vigilantes and volunteer militias and hired guards and mercenaries can do better than government military and police forces. Governments that run military and police forces are being very insulting and condescending, presuming that people are incapable of defending themselves, and presuming that politicians and bureaucrats know better than you do about how to defend you. Government military and police forces interfere with the protection market, crowding out entrepreneurs who could do better with guard and mercenary companies. Government military and police forces have coercion as their business, and nothing is legitimate unless it is voluntary. Governments can disregard laws and constitutions and the like and use force on anyone they don't like with impunity, therefore, governments must be disarmed. Military atrocities and police brutality prove that government military and police forces cannot be trusted. Government military and police forces help governments collect taxes, which are an absolutely intolerable imposition. Government military and police forces encourage laziness and dependence on government, because they make people feel that they don't have to protect themselves. Government military and police forces are about taking money from people willing to protect themselves and rewarding those who are too lazy to protect themselves. In the Good Old Days, everybody protected themselves because governments recognized that everybody had to protect themselves. We must return to those Good Old Days. All of you have a much stronger motive to defend yourselves than the government does, so we ought to put your defense in the hands with those with the strongest motive to defend you -- you yourselves. In fairness to many right-wingers, they half-recognize much of what I am talking about by loving guns and sometimes by organizing militias. But where are the gun lovers who advocate disbanding military and police forces because their guns are all that's necessary? A lot of Americans gripe about American armed forces protecting nations like European ones and Japan, on the ground that those nations are affluent enough to afford big military forces. However, that could be politically difficult. After World Wars I and II, many people wanted a pacifist Germany, and that's what they got. Secret Service code names for Romney and Santorum revealed: Javelin and Petrus | The Ticket - Yahoo! News Quote: While GOP rivals Romney, Santorum and Gingrich enjoy Secret Service protection, Ron Paul told Jay Leno on Tuesday that he wouldn't take the security offer. "It's a form of welfare, having the taxpayers take care of somebody and I'm an ordinary citizen," Paul said. "I should pay for my own protection." I think that he deserves a lot of respect for saying that.

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