The Nature of Government
“Good government” is, to me, a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing.
All governments enact their programs by force, or the threat of it. The essence of government is compelled obedience. Obey, or die.
History makes this brute fact painfully clear: virtually all premature, violent deaths in human history have come at the hands of governments. And not just in war, but in purges, famines, forced marches, secret prisons—carried out by governments against their own people.
The very institutions that claim to protect us have, time and again, turned inward. And when they do, they don’t merely fail. They kill.
Even when the killing stops, the tyranny remains.
Governments extract resources at gunpoint and squander them—often on unnecessary wars. But even in peacetime, they find ways to empower themselves, debase the currency, and erect barriers to human flourishing—sometimes in the name of tradition, sometimes in the name of progress.
There is no system of categories that can rationally divide governments into good and bad. Unless, of course, one is willing to drop the meaning of those words. All governments coerce, and coercion is the policy of savages.
We cannot make categorical distinctions. Qualitatively, all governments are the same. But quantitatively, they differ—and those differences matter. It is possible, indeed incumbent upon us, to rank governments from bad to worse.
The Gaza Failure
Which brings me to Israel and Hamas.
I believed then—and still believe—that the October 7th attack was the product of Israeli government failure. Hamas had never hidden its goals: to destroy Israel and to kill Jews. It had been explicit about that policy for decades, and had acted upon it an almost daily basis. Yet Israel had left its border with Gaza unguarded. It had permitted, even encouraged, civilians to settle near that border—and issued a permit for a music festival just miles from a regime that worships martyrdom and teaches murder to children.
That’s insane. If you accept the premise of government at all, then Israel had a clear duty to defend its border and protect its citizens. It failed. Catastrophically.
And then it did what governments always do when they fail: it lashed out. It started a war.
Now, to be clear: if murder, rape, and kidnapping are your chosen instruments of war—as they are for Hamas—you deserve whatever you get. And if that weren’t enough, Hamas openly violates the laws of war by embedding its forces in and around schools, mosques, and hospitals. Coercion may be the policy of savages, but savagery is aspirational for Hamas.
Still, I believed then—and to some extent still do—that Israel compounded its failure by launching a conventional military campaign in Gaza. It was predictable, perhaps even justified. But it was also deeply costly. Bombing densely populated neighborhoods, firing into schools and hospitals, killing thousands of civilians—these are not just military acts. They are moral acts. Moral failures. And they carry consequences.
The backlash was both fierce and inevitable. First, a crisis of security. Then, a crisis of legitimacy. A failure to protect its citizens created one set of political problems; an overreaction created another.
For decades, I’ve believed that war is never the answer. War destroys value—and that destruction kills in ways bullets and bombs cannot. I couldn’t help but wonder: What if, instead of waging war, Israel had hardened its border, secured its citizens, and then quietly hunted down the leaders of Hamas—just as it did after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972?
That response might have been slower. But it also might have been smarter. The death toll would have been lower. The outrage on college campuses might have been muted. And while it is absurd to accuse Israel of genocide, it is also true that many innocent civilians died.
And so, even though the pro-Hamas activists haunting college campuses wildly overstated their case, I can’t deny: they had a case to make.
Then the War Changed
I’ve long believed that war is a dead end. I’ve believed, too, that civil disobedience—at least in its modern, theatrical form—is mostly a waste of time. Shouting slogans in the quad, blocking traffic, menacing Jewish students on elite campuses because of a war half a world away—this doesn’t shift policy. It doesn’t persuade. It only flatters the protester.
Still, even the most unserious activist had a point: innocent civilians were dying in Gaza.
Then the war changed.
In recent weeks, Israel expanded its campaign and launched strikes inside Iran. Let’s be honest: Iran has spent decades financing, arming, and guiding terrorist networks across the region, including Hamas. The blood of innocents—Israeli, Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, and Palestinian—is on the hands of the Ayatollahs. There is no serious doubt about this.
But facts still matter, even in war. Israel did not bomb Iranian neighborhoods. It targeted military facilities—mostly those connected to Iran’s nuclear program. And if there is such a thing as a just war, this may qualify.
I’ve never been fully convinced that a nuclear Iran would spell apocalypse. Most despotic regimes pursue weapons not to use them, but to ensure their survival. But I could be wrong. Iran’s rulers often speak like men on a messianic suicide mission. If anyone were to unleash catastrophe not out of strategy, but out of religious fervor, it might be them. A non-nuclear Iran is a safer world.
So Israel strikes Iran’s military infrastructure.
And what does Iran do?
It launches hundreds of ballistic missiles—not at Israeli military targets, not at airbases or weapons depots—but directly at Israeli cities. Not near civilians. At them.
And suddenly, the protesters vanish. No marches. No angry manifestos from the faculty lounge. No blood-red handprints on library walls. No chants about genocide. Just silence.
And so the accusations made against these activists—that they’re not anti-war, not even pro-Palestinian, but simply anti-Israel—now appear to be correct. These weren’t dissidents. They were anti-semitic cosplayers in keffiyehs.
The Fog Lifts
Israel screwed up. Horribly. It failed to protect its citizens—arguably its only legitimate duty. It stumbled into a brutal urban war and killed thousands. But even so, I doubt Israel would have bombed schools and hospitals had Hamas not embedded its war machine beneath them.
Israel keeps its military facilities far from its civilian population.
Iran bombed the civilians anyway.
Things that were once cloudy are, at least to me, now clear.
Earlier this week, I was at a dinner with a young woman who had lived in Israel and attended a university there for a number of years. She told me during our conversation that she had a Palestinian boyfriend. In Israel. And that he enjoyed most of the benefits of Israeli citizenship.
He could get an education. He could associate with whomever he wanted and speak out against the government. And while citizenship in Israel is a complicated matter—based, in part, on one’s religious choices, and the source of the absurd claim that Israel is an apartheid state—this young man could vote.
And, keep in mind—he is a Palestinian.
If he happened to be gay, he would be in no danger from the regime based on his sexual orientation. Everyone in Israel—men, women, Jews and non-Jews—can work, learn, and live in relative peace and freedom.
Unless Iran is lobbing ballistic missiles into their neighborhood.
No Illusions, Just Choices
Governments are evil and incompetent. I am opposed to war because I believe it is a crude instrument of state power, managed by power-lusting politicians, mostly counterproductive and contrary to human flourishing.
I believed that before October 7th, and in its immediate aftermath—all of which was a failure of the Israeli government.
But I must confess to some confusion in the last week. All governments are evil, but they are not all the same.
Some crush their citizens with nooses and poison gas, others with bureaucrats. Some build rockets under hospitals; others build universities where purported enemies can fall in love. Some fire into cities on principle. Others do it by mistake, then try not to do it again. None are innocent. But some, maybe, try. And in a world full of state-sponsored savagery, that difference matters.
I don’t like being forced to choose between evils. But I will not pretend the choice is meaningless. If a government must exist—and it seems we haven’t yet figured out how to live without them—then let it be the kind where a Palestinian can study in an Israeli university, where a citizen can curse the prime minister and go home unharmed, where war is not the first instinct, even if it remains a principle policy option. I didn’t want this war. I still don’t. But if Iran insists on forcing it, I know which side I’d rather see lose.