Regardless of the original intentions of a state's founders or the heritage that a state claims, if those running the state simply maintain their existing powers rather than growing them, they will find themselves circumvented. Subdivisions and organic local communities nominally under the state will develop independently from the state's center of power, and the state's power will, over a period lacking in centralization, be rendered negligible at best. This necessitates that the state centralize in response to any diverging localities to continue existing.

To sustain its centralization, the state relies on narratives and justifications propagated by its apologists. One of the most popular justifications for the increasing scope of power since the early modern era has been the safeguarding of rights and liberties of the people subjected to the state. Contrary to the promise, the safeguarding of rights and liberties only serves to expand the power of the state, further centralizing its domains and in time inevitably regulating the rights and liberties, eroding the cause itself. This is demonstrated no clearer than in the history of the United States, specifically in the First Amendment.