The cycle of ever increasing state power relies on placing the ordinary person in a position of abject helplessness where they believe the only avenue of escape is to call on the state to do more to ‘save’ them. By placing ordinary people at the mercy of armed criminals – the logic goes – they will call for the state to have more power to protect them. In the end the state has all power, and the people are as helpless as before.

Under such conditions history shows the state always turns to tyranny.

In the last 100 years more people have been killed by the actions of their own governments, not including fighting wars, than by any other cause. Individual acts of violence pale into insignificant numbers by comparison to the millions of civilian deaths at the hands of those civilians own governments. Yet people believe in giving the power to the state rather than retaining the power themselves individually. It is a major coup of state propaganda – one that should deeply concern us all.

We should be less willing to hand our rights, freedoms and security over to state control.