The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which
means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a
policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort
to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper
functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the
army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your
property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by
rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates
the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of
armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine
designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral
purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest
enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the
right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of
self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of
social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your
gang is bigger than his.