But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Every state has not only the right but the duty to make adequate provision for its own defense in the way it thinks best, providing it does not do so at the expense of any other state.
Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made.
Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.
The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence.
Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression.
The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.
The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.
The first responsibility of the state is to guarantee the safety of the people.
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
Aggression is simply another name for government.