[devilbunny]

> a government whose sole purpose is to protect its people

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement.

[gambutin]

Asking questions usually helps to alleviate confusion.

What is it exactly you’re confused about?

[devilbunny]

What government can you actually point to - not theoretical, but actually existing - which holds as its sole purpose the safety of all its people?

[gambutin]

Isn’t that like everything else in life? We set very high standards and then measure people against them.

Which boss is perfect? Which dad is? Nothing and no one is.

But there are shades. Some are way closer to the bar than others.

I can list hundreds of governments that have not reacted to mass protests by killing unarmed civilians (their own people) by the thousand.

[devilbunny]

If you want to have a philosophical discussion about whether that is really the "sole purpose of government", then I suppose we could have one, though frankly my interest in that isn't all that high.

That's a long way from asserting that it is, in fact, the sole purpose of government, which was what I objected to.

[gambutin]

It’s a bit odd how fast the discussion moves away from what actually happened and onto nitpicking the wording used to criticize it.

Even if you drop the word “sole” entirely, the basic expectation is still that a government does not kill unarmed civilians.

At that point, it is fair to wonder whether the objection adds any clarity, or just pulls attention away from the judgment itself.