Thomas woods has written some excellent pieces on the self-perpetuation of government. The various departments and branches are just different versions of fiefdoms of old - their wages and salaries come from violent appropriation at the point of a gun/swords and spears. Do you think it is in a welfare bureaucrat's best interest to ensure that LESS people go on welfare and lose the motivation to work for fractionally more than they receive from doing nothing?Do you think it is in the prison guard's best interest to speak out against the fact that 86% of the entire US jail population is in jail for "crime" with no identifiable victim?Do you think it is going to help the job security of a cop to speak out against passing laws and making things "illegal" by mandate?I'm glad to hear your opinions, Priscilla. one major point of contention I have is that you assert our rights were PROMISED to us. They were not. We are born with our rights, they are ours by virtue of the fact that we possess consciousness, the ability to make choices, and a human soul. Government does not give us our rights - if you make the minarchist case they only exist to make sure that our rights are not infringed upon. I don't believe this is possible, personally, and while I would be happy with minarchism as a second choice, I am an anarcho-capitalist through and through.I love Ron Paul though, as he at least gets the dialogue moving in the right direction. And from what I'm seeing there are more and more waking up every day. There is hope, however small, that the distant future will be brighter than the world we live in today...