The paradox is that we must judge the state not according to what we would do if we controlled it, but in the light of what it could do if our enemies controlled it. It’s existence, like nuclear weapons become a factor in itself. The playwright Robert Bolt understood what the Bolivarians did not: the state can be dangerous unless it can be made predictable. As one of Bolt’s plays puts it: “the law is not a ‘light’ for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. …The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely.”