Government Is Necessary Evil

"Government is a necessary evil."

(a work in progress)

I'm *sure* I'm quoting somebody on that, but I have no idea who. Nevertheless, I completely agree.

I've been thinking about this a bit, lately, and it finally crystallized for me just a few minutes ago. What had me hung up was the definition in "necessary evil" - I was hung up trying to make both words relate to the same thing.

What crystallized was that they are not related to one thing. The statement contains *two* contexts, not one - society and individuals.

So, let me break this down two the two statements: "Government is necessary" and "Government is evil"

...and the questions are begged: "Is government necessary?" "Is government evil?" (With corollaries - "to whom is government...?" [did I use "whom" correctly there? Pat ~me~ on the *BACK*! :])

Is government necessary? (For crying out loud...no wonder people give up on thinking deeply) What *kind* of necessary are we talking about? For simplicity's sake, I'll just look at two - "Metaphysically necessary" and "Existentially necessary". But there's another dimension; to *whom* is it necessary? I've already mentioned the candidates: individuals and society.

Which converts the question into a grid of four areas for discussion:

metaphysically+individuals	metaphysically+society
existentially+individuals	existentially+society

(Whoboy...this is going to take some time. I wish I was in a class that I could get credit for this.)