“The ‘liberal’ view of state, society, and the individual holds that society is naturally harmonious, with the interests of diverse individuals (who are the reality behind such secondary institutions such as the family, church, etc.) coinciding to the benefit of all. Crime and war are therefore aberrant and pathological rather than systemic and recurrent. The place of the state, if it has any place at all, is to suppress these incidental eruptions of violence and maintain a set of legal rules that apply equally to all — which is to say, the law is not a battlefield. The latter-day anarcho-capitalist variant of this view says that the state is not in fact necessary to maintain rules and suppress sporadic violence; even those functions can better be performed by non-state agencies.” (02/01/10)