I came across this particular progression in Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man, Part Two”, and thought it bore quoting.  It begins with an assertion of his view (a popular one at the time) of the purpose that government SHOULD have:

Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have no other object than the general happiness.  When, instead of this, it operates to create and encrease wretchedness in any of the parts of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary.

He goes on to cover again a point that he hits over and over again throughout all of his writings; the idea that a man living in a condition of civilization should be no more wretched than a man living without civilization.

Customary language has classed the condition of man under the two descriptions of civilized and uncivilized life.  To the one it has ascribed felicity and affluence; to the other hardship and want.  But, however, our imagination may be impressed by painting and comparison, it is nevertheless true, that a great portion of mankind, in what we call civilized countries, are in a state of poverty and wretchedness, far below the condition of an Indian.

Paine goes on to ask why this is.  He concludes that although people the world over tend to have civilized societies, where human beings find it advantageous to work together to build wealth and happiness for everyone concerned, governments operate on a different principle.  They fight and are jealous, scheming, and destructive.

…governments, being yet in an uncivilized state, and almost continually at war, they pervert the abundance which civilized life produces to carry on the uncivilized part to a greater extent.  By thus engrafting the barbarism of government upon the internal civilization of a country, it draws upon the latter, and more especially from the poor, a great portion of those earnings, which should be applied to their own subsistence and comfort. –Apart from all reflections of morality and philosophy, it is a melancholy fact, that more than one-fourth of the labor of mankind is annually consumed by this barbarous system.

Let me just inject my .02 here.  What Paine is objecting to here is a proto-type of the military industrial complex.  He is saying that the government spends it’s money on war  so that it can justify its own existence so that it can levy taxes upon the people so that it can spend the money in war, so that it can justify its own existence.  Much of this money, of course, finds its way into the pockets of those who give material support to the government.

He is not objecting to paying taxes for education of children.  He is not objecting to paying taxes for the maintenance of the poor or infirm.  He is not objecting to paying taxes for administration of civil law, maintenance of roads, waterways, public health, minting of money, building or maintenance of public buildings, museums, cultural centers, schools, government buildings or community halls and meeting houses.

He is objecting to paying taxes so that governments can go to war for the purpose of justifying their own existence and enriching their friends and supporters, thus converting the wealth generated by the working classes into spoils for the upper classes.

What has served to continue this evil, is the pecuniary advantage, which all the governments of Europe have found in keeping up this state of uncivilization.  It affords to them pretenses for power, and revenue, for which there would be neither occasion nor apology, if the circle of civilization were rendered compleat.  Civil government alone, or the government of laws, is not productive of pretences for many taxes; it operates at home, directly under the eye of the country, and precludes the possibility of much imposition.  But when the scene is laid in the uncivilized contention of governments, the field of pretenses is enlarged, and the country, being no longer a judge, is open to every imposition, which governments please to act.

So we have a situation now where we have a lower and middle class feeling the squeeze of higher taxes (on a State and local level, and in a form that our Minnesota governor is pleased to call "fees"), and cuts in civil government to subsidize a war.  We have a carefully manufactured PR campaign that blames illegal immigrants (they are coming here and taking our jobs and using up our civil resources).

That war effort is being shorn up by National Guard troops constituted in large part by working class men and women who joined the National Guard out of patriotism as well as to supplement their incomes in an economy where incomes have not kept pace with the rising cost of living, yet, executive compensation has increased by hundreds of times in just a couple of decades.

The National Guard are state resources, which the federal government is using to execute a war for the federal government at the same time that the federal government is cutting the amount of money given to the States. 

Unfunded mandates like “No Child Left Behind” as well as others put yet another burden on our civil government resources.  Tax cuts for the wealthy add more strain.

Welfare reform has forced many of the poor to go back to work despite the fact that they cannot actually live on their earnings.  This has kept downward pressure on wages (impoverishing more people), and also allowed corporations to use public funds to subsidize their work force through public assistance programs to feed, house, and provide medical care for their employees who do not earn enough to care for themselves.  Essentially, they are established in a state of perpetual poverty and crisis.  What one might call “wretchedness”.

In short, our civil government is dying the death of a thousand cuts, and the poor and the illegal immigrants and the liberals are being blamed while the true villains get richer at the expense of everyone else and the civil government.  All the while, they vilify the civil government as the source of all public expense and taxes.

We have companies like Halliburton and its many subsidiaries, providing services to the government for the war effort at outrageous prices made possible by no-bid contracts awarded to them summarily by politicians beholden to them for political favors.  We are in a war to obtain influence over resources important to those very companies.

We deposed Saddam, the leader of the country we are at war in, despite the fact that we had previously installed him as dictator and gave him the means to hold onto his power so that he would control the populace (and his neighbors) and give us favorable considerations when we asked for them.  We have been supporting a monarchy in another (Saudi Arabia), helping them keep a hold on their populace for the same reasons.

One of the ways that they keep a hold on their populace is to provide schools where the populace is taught religious extremism, and hate for us.  Some of those men perpetrated the events of 9/11.  Our government has provided aid and comfort to the people who created our own enemies, and then we are paying exploitive prices to fight those enemies.  The exploitive prices are becoming the profits of the very people (and their friends) who got us into this in the first place.  If this war is successful, those people will have access to even greater profits exploiting the natural resources of the country where we are at war.

What would Thomas Paine say about this?

In this view of the case, we have two distinct characters of government; the one is civil government, or the government of laws, which operates at home, the other the court or cabinet government which operates abroad, on the rude plan of uncivilized life; the one attended with little charge, the other with boundless extravagance; and so distinct are the two, that if the latter were to sink, as it were by the sudden opening of the earth, and totally disappear, the former would not be deranged.  It would still proceed, because it is the common interest of the nation that it should, and all the means are in practice.

Revolutions, then, have for their object, a change in the moral condition of governments, and with this change the burthen of public taxes shall lessen, and civilization will be left to the enjoyment of that abundance, of which it is now deprived.

Just one more little point I’d like to make before I sign off with this.  I’ve heard “Libertarians” argue that the only purpose of government is the administration of laws.  As they generally seem to be Thomas Paine fans, I am perplexed that they seem to think that means only criminal law.  It is clear from passages in everything he has written that when Paine refers to civil law and civil government, he found those concepts firmly in the basis of Natural Law.  He clearly defines his view of natural law in Agrarian Justice.  It inarguably includes the maintenance of the poor and infirm in the definition of public good and general happiness.