State

The qualified State

People commonly think of the State to include a system where authority is exercised one over the other either through kings, ruling elites, elected individuals or groups or even by the majority itself. Whenever anyone uses a term like "state", "State", "STATE" or "statist" they should qualify the sense in which they are using the word. Some states, governments or nations in history have had no rulers, no imposed taxation, no legislated laws yet they functioned as a nation with some form of self-government.

Statist

A Statist is an advocate of a political system in which the state has substantial centralized control over social and economic affairs.

In political science, statism is the belief that the state should control either economic or social policy, or both, to some degree.

Statism would normally include "substantial centralized control" yet some think it can take many forms from minarchism to totalitarianism. Minarchists prefer a minimal state such as a night-watchman state to protect people from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud with military, police, and courts.

The key difference is what does the word "state" include and how is it being used?

State as a noun

The word state may only be "the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time."

In that sense, synonyms would only include condition, shape, situation, circumstances, position...

But the state may also be "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government.

Such as "Germany, Italy, and other European states" or it might include early Israel where there was no king or even the Kingdom of God spoken of by Jesus and John the Baptist. When there was no king "every man did that which was right in his own eyes". When Jesus as king of Judea appointed the ministers of His government they were commanded to not exercise authority one over the other like the governments who had "rulers".

Synonyms would include country, nation, land, sovereign state, nation state, kingdom, realm, power, republic, confederation, federation

The phrase "an autonomous state" could many any of those forms of government including one where all the power of the State rested not in a central ruler or class nor in the people as a collective like a democracy but actually in all the people individually where the people remained in a "state of nature". In the latter there would be no "centralized control".

State adjective

As an adjective, a state would include that which is of, provided by, or concerned with the civil government of a country.

If there was no centralization it would mean that all member of the general society would have to care about their neighbor and their rights as much as they care about their own. Centralizing the care or responsibility of or the concern for civil government if everyone was diligent in the pursuit of the weightier matters of justice and mercy for all of society.

A state is a type of polity that is an organized political community living under a single system of government. States may or may not be sovereign. A state may or may not be centralized.

State Bouvier

Bouvier's 1856 dictionary defines “STATE, government. This word is used in various senses.”

Bouvier expands his definition of State by saying “In its most enlarged sense, it signifies a self-sufficient body of persons united together in one community for the defence of their rights, and to do right and justice to foreigners. In this sense, the state means the whole people united into one body politic; (q. v.) and the state, and the people of the state, are equivalent expressions. 1 Pet. Cond. Rep. 37 to 39; 3 Dall. 93; 2 Dall. 425; 2 Wilson's Lect. 120; Dane's Appx. §50, p. 63 1 Story, Const. §361.”

STATE Bouvier

Bouvier separately defines “STATE, condition of persons. This word has various acceptations. If we inquire into its origin, it will be found to come from the Latin status, which is derived from the verb stare, sto, whence has been made statio, which signifies the place where a person is located, stat, to fulfil the obligations which are imposed upon him.

• 2. State is that quality which belongs to a person in society, and which secures to, and imposes upon him different rights and duties in consequence of the difference of that quality.
• 3. Although all men come from the hands of nature upon an equality, yet there are among them marked differences. It is from nature that come the distinctions of the sexes, fathers and children, of age and youth, &c.
• 4. The civil or municipal laws of each people, have added to these natural qualities, distinctions which are purely civil and arbitrary, founded on the manners of the people, or in the will of the legislature. Such are the differences, which these laws have established between citizens and aliens, between magistrates and subjects, and between freemen and slaves; and those which exist in some countries between nobles and plebeians, which differences are either unknown or contrary to natural law.
• 5. Although these latter distinctions are more particularly subject to the civil or municipal law, because to it they owe their origin, it nevertheless extends its authority over the natural qualities, not to destroy or to weaken them, but to confirm them and to render them more inviolable by positive rules and by certain maxims. This union of the civil or municipal and natural law, form among men a third species of differences which may be called mixed, because they participate of both, and derive their principles from nature and the perfection of the law; for example, infancy or the privileges which belong to it, have their foundation in natural law; but the age and the term of these prerogatives are determined by the civil or municipal law.
• 6. Three sorts of different qualities which form the state or condition of men may then be distinguished: those which are purely natural, those purely civil, and those which are composed of the natural and civil or municipal law. Vide 3 Bl. Com. 396; 1 Toull. n. 170, 171; Civil State.”

States Rights

Just as there are different kinds of Civil rights there are also different kinds of state rights. All the power of the State to exercise authority over the individual originated in the original individual.

We can debate the process by which that power is moved from the individual to the collective state but essentially it is the result of consent. That consent produces what is called a social compact based in the principles of natural law.

• He who receives the benefit should also bear the disadvantage.

Cujus est commodum ejus debet esse incommodum.

• No one is obliged to accept a benefit against his consent.

Invito beneficium non datur. Dig. 50, 17, 69.

But if he does not dissent he will be considered as assenting. Vide Assent.

• He who derives a benefit from a thing, ought to feel the disadvantages attending it.

Que sentit commodum, sentire debet et onus.2 Bouv. Inst. n. 1433.

• He who is silent appears to consent. Jenk. Cent. 32.

Qui tacet consentire videtur.

The power of the State increases with our dependence upon it. To erode the power of the State is the reverse of dependence upon the which means less dependence upon the state. Private or homeschool, No public welfare or subsidies, you take care of your parents, not Social Security.

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