The biggest benefactors to humanity also come from the state: outlawing slavery, implementing universal healthcare, providing law and order, underwriting transportation networks.

Knee-jerk fearmongering about the government doesn't help anyone.

Wariness of the potential abuse of power is no more paranoid than following proper technique handling a sharp kitchen knife.

Yes but extending your analogy, the knife is sharp. I totally agree that the government needs careful watching, but I disagree that we should totally fear all government. A government without power would be like using a butter knife...you probably won't cut yourself, but you'll also have a lot of trouble cooking.

That explanation deserves a slow clap. An upvote is simply not enough.

The parent is not talking about being wary, it's fearmongering about what governments do. I think it's naive to think that the government is an evil agent at the same time it provides old-age pensions so people can continue to live when they can no longer work. That rather sounds like action directly in people's interests to me.

Governments are more complex these simplistic, blanket statements and positions.

Actually, they aren't. Go read the Federalist Papers.

I am from Sweden. We do trust the state and each others. The society comes really high on the sociological metric of "trust".

That said, it is just ... naive... to argue that "Some instances of X have done good, so let's trust (all?) X".

Especially since these X evolve surprisingly over time, sometimes quickly.

(The whole of Europe demilitarised totally after the cold war and are now surprised we have something like a Hitler as a neighbour.)

Edit: Hmm... that comment was about internal US politics? OK... Living in a country with trusting idiots which believe what they are told to believe, I do know that politics for internal consumption can seem weird from the outside! Both the US extreme left/right seems crazy (say, Chomsky and Fox).

An important nuance here is that if Mussolini was a murderer, there are many thiefs, racketeers and white collar criminals in the mix as well. We know and accept those who were such criminals that the idea of international crimes against humanity were formalized around their crimes. On that scale, there are plenty of misdemeanors that go unprosecuted (and unacknowledged),

this is a bit shortsighted. civil liberties have to be defended every day against governments, private corporations, special interest groups, religious entities, etc. it's a continuous struggle and the legal form of such an organization is of second order in importance.

The biggest crimes have come from states because states are the biggest organizations of people. It's almost a tautology.

I think it's just as naive to believe that the State always sides against your interest. Hitler and Stalin were heads of state, but so were FDR and Churchill.