What is the ideal relation between the individual and the state?

Question

Should the individual serve the state or the state serve the individual? What is the best form of government and what is the worst? When is a man justified in disobeying the dictates of the state? To what extent should the majority rule and thereby act against the freedom of the minorities? When is a man justified in rebelling against the established order and creating a new state? What are the relative merits of the different economic systems (capitalism, communism, etc.).

Answer 1

The State's entire responsibility is to protect the individual's natural rights from infringement, their body from attack, their property from theft, and their homeland from invasion.

The individual's responsibility is to see to it that the State fulfills those duties, and to install a new State should it refuse or fail.

There is no need for a majority to infringe on the natural rights of any minority if one basic rule applies uniformly: that a human may act or believe in any manner they see fit so long as their actions do not harm another person or another's property, nor deprive them of any of the same natural rights.

Our own constitutionally limited republic is the best system of government yet established on this planet which has at least the potential for fulfilling of all of the above.