| Mr Khan said: The key is that in America there's a stronger sense that "the government" is distinct from "the people." We view the government almost in a way similar to the peoples of kleptocracies like Russia or Ukraine, when we should have the notion that *we* are the government should be better-entrenched in America than in other countries. This leads to the false idea that socialism involves the government taking stuff, when really it's horizontal redistribution, from those who have prospered to those who have not. |
Not even classical liberals, who postulated the idea of government of the people, actually believed this. Thomas Paine's common sense is likely the precursor to American classical liberalism, and consequently liberal reprsentative government, and even he said that society and government are two distinct entities, the latter being a necessary evil.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others."
