That's really bizarre. Your whole conception of a state as being merely a collection of individuals, like some homeowners association or something.
Rather than attacking the position by insulting it, how about actually attempting to justify your position? I look forward to your argument that a nation is not a group of individuals.
It isn't.
Unsupported assertion.
Not a single political philosopher says it is.
Appeal to authority, using an unsupported assertion. And besides, it's false. Murray Rothbard is one example, which suffices to disprove your claim.
A state is something that has an identity separate and distinct from the individuals comprising it.
Another unsupported assertion; still begging the question. I'd love to see you attempt to prove this. Nations
have identity? Are you saying that they're self-aware? That they get hungry, and sleepy, and happy, and sad?
The Founders recognized that.
Another appeal to authority.
Thus they gave the government powers. Those powers are fundamentally different from the rights of individuals, because a state is fundamentally different from an individual.
You are actually very much mistaken. The founders believed that the powers of government were powers granted to it, by consent of the governed, and represented a delegation of powers possessed by the governed in the first place. This was precisely
Locke's theory of government as a
revocable social contract. Madison specifically cites Lock in a letter to Jefferson in February of 1825, saying in particular, "Sidney & Locke are admirably calculated to impress on young minds the right of Nations to establish their own Governments, and to inspire a love of free ones...." To the founders, a government was something established by the people; it was not an entity in its own right with a separate identity and rights superseding those of the citizens.
Why dont you explain why its wrong to hunt down and kill someone who I have good reason is going to threaten me in the future.
I could argue using your favorite style of reasoning: go ahead and try it and see what the US government does to you. You'll be charged and convicted of murder.
Or I could leave the burden of proof where it belongs and ask how you justify such a thing. On that note, I repeat my curiosity how you manage to justify that in the context of Jewish law? Judaism certainly does
not condone hunting down someone and killing him based on what he might do someday.
Or I could point out the obvious: killing someone who neither has done anything to you in the past, nor is threatening imminent harm in the present, is what we call "murder." If I'm
not threatening you, the fact that I
might threaten you at some day in the future justifies nothing. Indeed, your argument is deliciously Hobbsian: your own statements prove conclusively that you
might threaten me in the future; any time you get it in your head that I
might threaten you, you will hunt me down and kill me. By your own expressed morality, the sensible thing to do would be to eliminate the threat by neutralizing you now.
--Len.