The New York Times has an interesting article on natural rights.Every human naturally seeks to be free of the coercion of others. No reasonable person is going to give others the ability to coerce him. But cooperating together to prevent such coercion is reasonable. And necessary, because groups of humans attack and control other groups. And this is also true of animals.
Rights are simply a way of specifying what the limits and purpose of such cooperation should be.
And its clear that reasonable people, when aware of all that the state is capable of, would only give it power to protect the interests of those agreeing to its establishment.
Everything beyond that is simply an attempt to hijack the state for one's own purposes, usually to be able to obtain what belongs to others or to control them in other ways.
People give the state the power that it has for one purpose: to prevent coercion. There really is no consent for everything else. If people were presented a checklist with everything the state could potentially do, all reasonable people would (naturally) check the "Protect me from coercion of others and do it for much less than it would cost me to do it myself" checkbox and not check "Do whatever you think is best" checkbox.
To submit yourself to a security arrangement does not mean you submit yourself to whatever else other people decide.
No reasonable person would have agreed at the establishment of the state that it should have unlimited power, unless, of course, he planned on being the beneficiary. So either the state, in its ultimate form, is not mutually agreed upon. Or the majority have been fooled. Or gradually, over time, the "social contract" has been eroded and twisted into something that no reasonable person would have agreed to and has no choice but to suffer through.
To submit yourself to a security arrangement does not mean you submit yourself to whatever else other people decide.
No reasonable person would have agreed at the establishment of the state that it should have unlimited power, unless, of course, he planned on being the beneficiary. So either the state, in its ultimate form, is not mutually agreed upon. Or the majority have been fooled. Or gradually, over time, the "social contract" has been eroded and twisted into something that no reasonable person would have agreed to and has no choice but to suffer through.
I tried to comment on this post, but my comments were apparently too verbose to be accommodated by the software. Anyway, my post on a couple themes suggested by your post is here: http://bit.ly/qg1TvN
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