Lew Rockwell has this to say today.

"In the war on terrorism, we’re dealing with the oldest political error: the belief that because everyone wants something (e.g. security and defense), government should or must provide it. If the error is pervasive, the result is the total state. If it is completely uprooted, the result is the purely free society."

Lew Rockwell is the mentor for those of us who desire to be Austrian economists. I always take his commentary seriously. I do wish I felt the same about his good friend Justin Raimondo, but Raimondo is the James Carville of the Peace Party. If he were elected Chairman of the Peace Party the world would be a better place, but Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader would probably get that job first. Well, we don't need to build a metaphor into an allegory....

I would say that if Society wants something, "it" may use whatever means it has at its disposal to get it. Unfortunately, due to the constant conflation by pundits of society and government, people keep thinking that if the government doesn't do a thing nobody will. Frederic Bastiat and Tom Paine blew that crap out of the water 155 and 227 years ago respectively.