I've spent much time in the thought about the nature of government, and how the whole concept needs a serious overhaul. Over time, things were thought of, reasons weighed, and ideas discarded when they became workable, and I came across the root of the problem.
The government is a group of people. However, so are the Salvation Army, Wal-Mart, and Slashdot. It also applies to cliques, families, and even neighborhoods. True, there's also infrastructure, but what difference is there between them? The government claims to have justification to perform violence on others, and to be fair, it is designed for the purpose of preventing people from predating one another. So, what separates the Government from a security company, or an arbitration agency? Why are they given more latitude, and more power that the former two organizations.
The Law.
There is a strange sort of not-worship involving the Law. People refuse to believe that they consider it a religion, but then they spout phrases like "Everyone's equal in the eyes of the Law," "Nobody is above the Law," and "You can't escape the long arm of the Law." People evoke the power of the law as a sort of mantra, and then they determine right or wrong based on whether something is legal or illegal. Then they give all members of the organization supposedly representing "The Law" with all the respect they would give angels or saints (or whatever exalted clergy they have in their respective religions).
This can have a nasty effect on the ego of people who are endowed with the awesome power of such reverence. They realize there's a lot they can do, and they don't have to answer for it, or they'll have a free pass. They have immense amounts of power over the actions of others with little need for effort, and fewer repercussions for their actions than a "non-law" person would have. After all, the people they have to answer to are also people they spend a lot of time around, there's naturally going to be some bonding at this point, so they would begin to have the "Us vs. Them" mentality against everyone who has grievances against them.
This is not to say that police, judges, politicians, etc. can't be good people. They can, and I have an inordinate amount of respect for those people who actually put effort into preventing the power from going to their heads. But the fact that the only motivation to stay good is an inhuman level of self-control is in itself, a large source of the problems.
And if the government is the clergy and chapels to this "Church of Law," just who is the god? Statistical superiority. The god of Law is the largest number of people, so it is important to stay on that group's good side. This is done by saying a little prayer in the form of a ballot once every so often, and then talking about it afterward in the vain hope that it would somehow affect the decision of the numerical superior. Then, you need to obey the edicts handed down by this god, or its representatives in the clergy.
Any who disobey the "Law," regardless of just how morally just the law was in the first place, are immediately looked at as heretics, and persecuted by the above clergy. They will be robbed, threatened, caged, paraded in a pretense of good faith, and in some cases, killed. The last likelihood increases greatly depending on the moral disposition of the policeman and the willingness of the persecuted to defend himself.
All this, because the Law is given more importance than it should really have... a good idea that should be limited to protecting people from violence. When it becomes more important than life, self-security, and freedom, then it is no longer a good idea.
