In his brilliant essay, "The Anatomy of the State," Murray Rothbard wrote that state power always relies on the manipulation of public opinion perhaps as much as its use of force and coercion (See his Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays). Since the class of people constituting the state always necessarily consists of only a small portion of the population, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that "their government is good, wise, and at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives." This is where intellectuals come in: "Promoting this [statist] ideology among the people … Continue reading Lincoln’s War on Northern Liberties