How does a government reduce force in human life? There are two main ways: a legal system (the legislature and the law courts), and a defense system (the police and the military).
A proper government has only these two functions: to define what constitutes the initiation of force, and to stop those who initiate it, be they criminals or invaders.
Whoever untied the Gordian Knot would be the king of Asia, said the prophecy.
No one could untie the knot until Alexander the Great.
He couldn’t find its end, so he came up with an “Alexandrian solution”—one slice from his sword and the knot was in pieces; thoroughly untied. An unsolvable problem sometimes goes away when a sharp mind or blade applies logic.
Let the little children come to me,” said Jesus (Matthew 19:14). But see what happens to a nation when it ignores the heart of God.
Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,
And shed innocent blood,
Even the blood of their sons and of their daughters,
Whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan:
And the land was polluted with blood.
Thus were they defiled with their own works,
And went a whoring with their own inventions.
Therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people,
Insomuch that he abhorred his own inheritance (Psalm 106:37-40).
If the United States was truly exceptional, what has happened to it?
How did the U.S. fall from its place as the world’s beacon of freedom and individual rights? How did the nation of achievers and owners become the “entitlement state” of looters and moochers?
