additional comment since its so hilarious and germane:

while i was listening to this, i was having an e-mail discussion with a friend of mine who is squarely in the "givernment is good as long as it does what I want" camp.

Direct quotes from her:

"I'm an agnostic atheist (leaning heavily towards atheist at this stage of my life) so religion, especially organized, is meh to me. " (this will make sense as you read on)

"There are real issues that need addressing: roe vs. wade (reinstate it), white supremacy, domestic violence, misogyny, sexism, COVID (and future outbreaks), housing, medical care, education, obviously I could go on.... hahahaha"

"Simply dismantling "authority" will NOT make these issues go away. The only way your utopia could ever work is if everyone is a clone. 1) Humans hate differences. 2) Humans hate. Period. "

The overwhelming theme of this is that there are people, whom I call sociopaths, who literally hate humanity and feel that humans cannot be trusted to live except under the forceful rule of a set of "good humans" (you know, the ones that are concerned with "roe vs. wade (reinstate it), white supremacy, domestic violence, misogyny, sexism, COVID (and future outbreaks), housing, medical care, education" who must force the rest of humanity to comport with their goals. Sadly, the number of these sociopaths who hate humanity (see: "agnostic atheist"), are large enough in number to actually affect the wellbeing of all of humanity.

They exist. Maybe you, the reader, are one of them. The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal" is a "self-evident" truth, but clearly many people disagree with that assertion.