Appealing to popular attitudes of the times, he encouraged Americans to fulfill their manly duty to spread Christian civilization. The United States, he asserted, was a liberator, not a conqueror. — Selling Empire: American Propaganda And War In The Philippines, Susan A. Brewer.

Then onward, Christian soldier! Through field of crimson gore,

Behold the trade advantages beyond the open door!

The profits on our ledgers outweigh the heathen loss;

Set thou the glorious stars and stripes above the ancient cross! — William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., Ibid. (Spreading Christianity to a nation already largely Catholic ended with some 200,000 civilian Filipinos dead.)

One of the suggestions Albert Jay Nock made in his 1939 essay, The Criminality of the State, was to view brutal actions by the world's states as typical of their behavior, especially among the strongest ones. Why be shocked, for example, by

the barbarous behavior of the German State towards some of its own citizens; the merciless despotism of the Soviet Russian State; the ruthless imperialism of the Italian State . . .?

His response to people surprised by such barbarity was to ask "What would you expect?  Look at the record!"

The State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal.

Nock was persuaded by Franz Oppenheimer's theory that people acquire wealth in one of two ways: Either through work or theft.  The first Oppenheimer called the economic means, the second the political means.  States are the manifestation of the political means, the embodiment of a predatory class that coercively feeds off and controls its productive captives.

Within the American state the occupants change periodically, and many people believe the troubles we're experiencing are due to voting the wrong people into office.  Better people would produce better government.

There are several shortcomings to this idea.  For one, the American state's growth over its history has been steady, beginning with the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789.  In Our Enemy, the State Nock wrote that under the Articles many northerners especially thought the distribution of power between government and the people was unsatisfactory, and "when the redistribution took place in 1789, it was effected with great difficulty and only through a coup d'État . . ."

The American party system is another reason "better people" don't make it into office. A pro-freedom candidate such as Ron Paul—especially because he called for auditing and then abolishing the Federal Reserve, the state's legal counterfeiter—found himself largely excluded from the levers of power. Party leaders, mega-donors, AIPAC and other PACs, along with a politically-controlled media combine to keep candidates who threaten the State's power off the ballot — or if they slip through, to see that they're removed.