A Brief Note on the Varieties of Government Activity

The state only really does two kinds of things:

• Things that nobody should ever do (and which are rightly considered crimes when anyone else does them); and
• Things that get done badly because government is doing them instead of leaving them to be done by the "voluntary sector."

The state's defenders are the equivalent of those who say that al Qaeda isn't all bad because it builds some of the hospitals that it then fills up with bombing victims.

Criminal  gangs are criminal gangs -- no matter how big they get, no matter what side charities they engage in, and no matter whether they are called "the Bloods," "the Crips" and "MS13" or "the Legislature," "the Executive" and "the Judiciary."