Government and The Riddle of Epicurus: A Little Help?

[Ex_Nihil0]

Help me out here folks.  I'm trying to modify the Riddle of Epicurus so that it applies to Government instead of God.  I've got a new version written below, but I'm not sure this is the best that can be done.

As a refresher here is the original:

If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?

If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?


And here is my modified version (plus me reading it on YouTube):

Is Government willing to prevent Tyranny, but not able?
Then Government is impotent.

Is Government able, but not willing?
Then Government is Tyrannical.

Is Government both willing and able?
Then whence come Tyranny?

Is Government is neither willing nor able?
Then why call it Government?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX1Tj9WaO4g
[yt]IX1Tj9WaO4g[/yt]

[MrBogosity]

I saw that. Very nice. But I'd make it more applicable to what people perceive government to be: a benevolent force that's out to help us, help the economy, make our lives better, safer, etc. Something like this:

Is government able to fix the economy but not willing? Then it is fascist.

Is it willing but not able? Then it is superfluous.

Is it willing and able? Then why is it not fixed?

Is it neither willing nor able? Then why have a government?

Maybe word it a bit better than that, but you can see how that could apply to any public policy issue you want it to.

[Ex_Nihil0]

I see what you mean, Shane, but I wanted to go for something universal, rather then particular to things like the economy or infrastructure, because I'd otherwise have to rewrite the argument for every aspect that I wanted to address.

My goal was to show that any government not 100% for the protection of Liberty wasn't just superfluous, but worse then useless.  The difficulty for me is that people just don't get the dichotomy between Liberty and Tyranny, because every time I bring this up nobody seems to understand that Liberty is a Negative state, or a state of non-being, while Tyranny is the positive state.  I then have to tie in the positivity of Tyranny to justify its own existence since negatives like Liberty require no proof.  It isn't up to me to prove an unsalted chip is in fact salty or that the salty is even necessary or beneficial when, in fact, adding salt could be harmful to one's health.  Its scarcely difficult to prove the necessity of salt when we already know we have to much of it in our diet, often in the most sneaky of places we'd never guess.

I get so disappointed how foreign a concept this is, yet the negativity of Liberty is fundamentally basic to the philosophy of the US Constitution.