But would it be so, in fact?

Given how evil we know government is, in fact, perhaps it's worth looking into what anarchy might be – and whether it might be less of an evil than government.

First, though, we ought to be clear about the things we're discussing.

What doe we mean by government? It is fundamentally the sole authority that legally controls an area (and the people within that area) via coercion.

The italics are used to emphasize two important things – relative to anarchy.

Government decides the extent of its own authority. There is no other (legal) authority to counterbalance the self-described authority of government. Jefferson and Madison tried to limit government not only by attempting to restrict it to enumerated (that is, specifically described) powers but also by creating a tiered – or federalized – system that would give some appeal contra authority within the structure of the authority itself. The House would balance the Senate and both would balance the Executive. Jefferson and Madison also articulated one further appeal – also still within the system. The states could nullify what the federal government decreed by ignoring what the federal government decreed or by refusing to enforce or allow its enforcement within the boundaries of the objecting states.

There was, of course, a more effective – and final – appeal that was ended by Abraham Lincoln. That of secession. It is a word that became a dirty word – on account of the outcome of that war, the victors always determining how the war is viewed by posterity. They made "secession" synonymous with rebellion – as if that were necessarily a bad thing. It is not generally considered a bad thing with regard to what the American colonists (some of them) did with regard to Great Britain but it became a very bad thing indeed, when their descendants attempted precisely the same four score and seven years later. Since then, the idea of rebellion has carried with it an inculcated smack of unwarranted defiance; i.e., it is taken as fundamentally (always) wrong to "rebel" against the authority of the government. That is, to reject its authority as illegitimate and thus, evil.

This gets us back to anarchy.

What doe we mean by this term?