Thomas Paine and the "necessary evil"

Thomas Paine was an intellectual who live in the eighteenth century. He was born in Great Britain, but eventually he migrated to America. Besides his books, Thomas Paine was also a known pamphleteer who helped the American Revolution. He is recognized as being one of the Founding Fathers of the Great American Nation. One of the most influential pamphlets in those days was written by him; Common Sense was widely read in America and had a major roll in influencing the people who lived in the American Colonies in to demanding independence from Great Britain. He was revolutionary and a libertarian.

One of my favorites passages of the pamphlet is this:

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing., but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities are heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."