In Against the State, Lew Rockwell emphasizes that the assault on our liberties from the state is not merely “the product of temporary malfunctions. To the contrary, the state is by nature evil.” Rockwell shows that the state is founded on coercion and maintains its power by use of force.
In recent years, following the rise of environmentalism, public health “safetyism,” and the war against “hate,” state interventions have encroached even further into private and family life. Against the State shows that these interventions are not only coercive but also antihuman in prioritizing their goals above human life. A striking example of this was the lockdown policy of closing schools and playgrounds, on the basis that children are resilient and so there is no reason why the state should not keep them under house arrest for several months of their lives.
Another example is the prioritization of the needs of the socialized medicine behemoths such as the United Kingdom’s cultish National Health Service: the British journalist Sherelle Jacobs comments that “with NHS spending now more than that for education, transport, the Home Office and defense put together, Britain is arguably now merely a health service with a state attached.” Similarly, in Canada, private healthcare is banned, and citizens struggling to cope with life are offered state assistance in killing themselves.
With the state on the rampage enforcing the “public good,” its defenders see no need to limit the power conferred on it to achieve that goal—after all, if the goal is noble and worthy, why should there be limits on the power to achieve it? In this way, the ideal of limited government is extinguished.
Rockwell also highlights the fact that the state creates the very problems for which it is then said we need state power to resolve:
The state is not a neutral observer. It will pass environmental legislation. It will regulate relations between races and sexes. It will put down this religion in order to raise that one up. In each case, the intervention only exacerbates conflicts, which in turn creates the impression that there really is an intractable conflict at work.
An example of state interventions fueling conflict is the protected status given to different groups based on their identity, notably race, sex, religion, and gender.
Hellbound and Down 