> "There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate"
I think this whole argument is mostly a problem because some people view government as an adversary, instead of the product of populace cooperation. Sure you get "oppression of the majority", but that's what policing has always been. Being free to do whatever you want means being free to oppress others. The only difference with government involvement is that it's using collective knowledge/intellect over individual.
That's because government is an adversary to anyone who doesn't agree with what it's doing. There is no such thing as "populace cooperation" unless all of the populace agrees on what should be done. That is very rarely the case; most cases of "populace cooperation" are a portion of the populace using the coercive power of the government to force everyone else to do the things that portion of the populace thinks are good ideas.
> that's what policing has always been. Being free to do whatever you want means being free to oppress others.
But if all the government does is "policing" in this sense--preventing people from oppressing others--then almost all of what governments do today would be off the table.
