I once defined "government" as "a system of murder, rape, extortion, coercion, theft, intimidation, and terror, the absence of which, it is said, would lead to disorder."
If you doubt this characterization then confront these hard facts: during the 20th century, governments managed to kill 200 million men, women, and children in wars, genocides, and other acts of formalized violence. During that same century, how many people were killed by individuals acting without political authority?
ENTROPY: The degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity. • Order is created and controlled by intelligence. Entropy occurs in the physical world without control by intelligence. Synonyms: Chaos, Confusion, Entropy, Disarray, Disharmony, Disintegration, Disorder, Disorganization, Disruption, Incoherence, Incohesive, Jumble, Noncohesive, Nonintegration, Mess, Morass, Muddle, Slackness, Sloppiness.
When speaking of divine perfection, we signify that God is just and true and loving, the author of order, not disorder, of good, not evil. We signify that he is justice, that he is truth, that he is love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were speaking; and that wherever these qualities exist, whether in the human soul or in the order of nature, there God exists. We might still see him everywhere, if we had not been mistakenly seeking for him apart from us, instead of in us; away from the laws of nature, instead of in them, but by partaking of that truth and justice and love which He himself is. Therefore the belief in immortality depends finally upon the belief in God. If there exists a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of men towards perfection; and if there be no progress of men towards perfection, then there cannot be a good and wise God. We cannot suppose that God's moral government, the beginnings of which we see in the world and in ourselves, will cease when we leave this life.
Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies . . . despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level.
When virtue is lost, benevolence appears; when benevolence is lost, right conduct appears; when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.