Liberty is lived and not elected.

For many inside the liberty movement the need to convert the devout statist is an instinct that burns with righteous conviction. It is with frustration that one can observe so many recent and distant examples of government horror and yet nothing ever changes for the positive. In sharing these horrors, it is then assumed that those believers in the State, those enforcers of its deeds and laws will somehow see the 'light' and suddenly convert to the message of liberty. It is assumed that in somehow using the process of democratic governance that one can convince enough of the voters to see the message, to embrace liberty so that government can then be saved from itself. It is why perhaps many libertarians, anarchists, minarchists, voluntarists, whatever sect of liberty one belongs are the most deluded.

Whether the empirical evidence happens to be economic, moral or warfare it never seems to have the punch that many assume that it should. Instead it is often met with slight concern but ultimately a dismissive ignorance that often only sees more of the same vulgar violence repeated. All done in the name of elusive abstracts, beliefs that society and culture needs such coercion, needs so many wars and needs the intrusions. Evidence be damned. The believers in the State and government shall go on worshipping.

For the devoted Christian, the bible is the sacred testimony of God's greatness. For many Greatness is not a moral positive. Inside its ancient and edited over time pages are stories of the early genesis of humanity and its relationship with God. It has examples of genocide, sacrifice, rape and slavery. All in the name of God. Yet, this God, is loved and adored regardless of the crimes found inside his own book. For the non-believer, it does not make any sense, for the believer it needs not to. Genocide is justifiable if in the end, it is benevolent.

For the patriotic American the history books, those biased and those more polemic have stories inked in blood of the early to recent examples of American greatness, led by a government of such rhetorically limit in scale yet its reach is imperially immense. All nations have this nationalist perspective, whether it is marred in Juche like those in North Korea to a more confused quagmire of shame and pride as experienced in modern day Germany, the history is full of graphic examples of cruelty and savagery yet from the pulpit of State leaders and intellectuals along with sanctioned historians and academics, help to explain the contexts of so much violence. And the institutions of nation, the very government with so much blood on its many loyal hands continues to reside so powerfully in both mind and heart of the devout patriots.

Despite the real examples versus the romantic depictions, many still worship and believe absolutely in the divinity of the Nation State. Its virtues seldom realised and what ones are apparent are their despite it and not because of it. Just like the God fearing who have read the bible the examples of mass death and torment are somehow viewed as a positive, after all the Lord works in mysterious ways. In the end so too does the government apparently.