"He's no anarco-libertarian--he has a very strong belief in the ability of the state to improve society." And herein lies the problem, whose definition of

"He's no anarco-libertarian--he has a very strong belief in the ability of the state to improve society." And herein lies the problem, whose definition of "improve" are we working with? The definition of improve is so wholly subjective as to be useless. To me improve means more freedom. To someone else, it may mean more security. Two different definitions of improve can be totally at odds with one another. The other word there that is very subjective, enough so to be downright dangerous, is "society". Is society defined as just the United States and it's citizens and to a much lesser extent our allies? Or is it defined as all of humanity, regardless of your citizenship or country of domicile? For me, society === humanity. I fear the actions of those who define society more narrowly than that because it almost always means the improvements to the in-group they consider "society" come at the expense of the well-being of the groups not included in their definition of "society". My experience has been that people with a narrower definition of "society" tend to think of solutions in terms of a pareto optimality and not seek out solutions that maximize welfare via a nash equilibrium.