Editing Social Enlightenment Thought (section)

== Civic Theory ==
1. Regardless of contemporary dilution, the most binding American principles remain: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.<br>
*1a. While general, these tenets concisely sum up what a society would look like at the top of its hierarchy of needs, orienting a government towards the most appropriate model for optimal well-being.<br>
*1b. These tenants can only exist if they're protected, they can only be protected if the state cannot infringe upon them, they cannot be protected if the state ceases to exist at all.<br>
*1c. Under this logic, anarchism could then only be described as idealistic in theory (and in all likelihood, would naturally devolve into kraterocracy in practice).<br>
*1d. In the same vein, consolidating power into the state, even with the intent to protect civil liberties and wellbeing, equally leaves opportunity for corruption without accountability.<br>
2. The liberty in question must be properly defined to be actualized, can only be defined by both positive and negative liberty (as freedom to oppress does not net true freedom), therefore the state can only ensure liberty by way of the harm principle ("right to swing your arms ends where another man's nose begins" sentiment).
*2a. This requires exclusive use of cost-benefit analysis and basic reason to make this judgment, as ideological motivations only result in arbitrary cherry-picking (evidenced in the American political binary).<br>
3. Security and freedom may coexist (and they must, as two sides of one coin, if granting that true freedom demands both positive and negative liberty), but delegating security to an unaccountable entitity can only be an existential threat to both.<br>
*3a. Therefore true security (and true freedom by extension) can only exist if its enforcement is one that is transparent, self-policed, and held to an equal standard to its people.<br>
4. In that same vein, the state in its entirety must not conflate usefulness with might. At its most optimal, its decision-making would be based on maximal effectiveness exerting minimal pressure.<br>
5. These are the conditions required for a state to function as a servant of its people, a tool and nothing more, no notions of "power", only servitude.