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And, in fact, they are. If all of the people stop supporting the government, the government stops existing, you cannot have a government if none of the people pay it any heed. However, so long as the people do, in general, support the government, they do not rise up to overthrow it or elect people to go to Washington to change it, then the government has a significant amount of power, at the behest of the people. The people have the power. If they choose not to exercise it, it remains the fault of the people, not the government.
And in your example, if a big powerful group comes to town and says "we have more guns and more power than you do, therefore we're just taking all of your land", of course you have to rely on the government and the power that the government wields, to save the day. After all, they're the ones who recorded your ownership of the land and your right to work it, they're the one with the military or the law enforcement agents who can come and tell that big powerful group what to go do with itself. Individuals do not have that ability, it is only through the collective decision of society and it's legal arm, the government, that the peace can be kept and wrongs, as described above, can be righted. There's got to be a balance between anarchy, which doesn't work, and totalitarianism, which doesn't work.
In my view, the only role of government for a free people is to recognize and secure our unalienable rights, and that would include providing the common defense. But again, if there is to be liberty, the people assign the government the power and authority it will have. It was not intended to be the other way around.
And again when you go to your job every morning or when I open up my store or whatever to do business, neither of us are likely doing that for the benefit of humankind or to better society. We each are doing that to increase our own bank account so that we can buy groceries, pay the rent or mortgage, make the car payment, or whatever it is that we need. But in doing that, we are benefitting humankind and bettering the society we live in and indirectly enabling many others to increase their bank accounts so that they can provide for their own needs.
This is the concept that Barack Obama, and apparently most who identify as progressives, simply don't get. They think we should all be beholden to a nation that provides us with what we have and we should contribute a huge percentage of our money in taxes for the common good. And some would see that a demand that everybody look to everybody else's interests as just another form of slavery. When it comes to free enterprise, each and every one of us 'built that' and not one of us should feel obligated to somebody else just because that somebody else was doing what he/she needed to do to put supper on the table.
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