The Founding Fathers knew it pays some people to go to war.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. . . .

— James Madison, Political Observations [April 20, 1795]

Well, they have the big guns, they can do what they want.

The State calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.

— Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own [1907

Sound reason for small government

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. – Henry David Thoreau

This was before Income Tax, now what is ours is theirs!

[It is an] essential, unalterable right in nature, engrafted into the British constitution as a fundamental law, and ever held sacred and irrevocable by the subjects within the realm, that what a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent.

— Samuel Adams, The Massachusetts Circular Letter [February 11, 1768