In Our Enemy, the State, Jay Nock discusses his libertarian view of the modern state. He believes that the modern state is actually our enemy because ?it is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him? (Nock 42). Nock believes that the structure of this new modern state is a strong central government that is obtaining its power from powers that previously belonged to the society

Belloc claims that the ruling body of the servile state is the few. Under the servile state there is significant class distinctions between the ruling and the ruled. This distinction is illustrated in the legislation of the new servile state. The legislation in a servile states creates a ?distinction between two classes of citizens, marking off the one as legally distinct from the other by a criterion of manual labor or of income? (Belloc 173). Therefore, the ruling class of a servile state has legally made class distinctions to make them legally of a higher class than the ruled.

Niccolo Machiavelli is another political philosopher who examines the modern state. In his book The Prince, Machiavelli claims that the state is the highest achievement of man and one should love the state more than his own soul. This differs from both Nock and Belloc, because they both see the modern state as something that needs improvement and not the best that society can achieve. But Machiavelli believes that the state is the greatest achievement of man. In his novel, he discusses principalities, which there are two different types, heredity and newly created principalities. He believes that principalities that are passed on from family to family are the easiest to old on to because the prince will naturally have the affection of the people. Machiavelli claims that in order for the prince to survive his state should be founded on good laws and good armies. The prince should command his own army because if the prince commands an army of men from his own state they are going to be more loyal than any other kind of army because they will believe in what they are fighting for. Machiavelli claims that ?it should be considered that nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to mange, than to put oneself at the head of introducing new orders (Machiavelli 23).?

. He states, that ?the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another? (Nock 23). Therefore, any increase in state power indicates a loss of social power. Nock believes that the aim of the modern state is to completely absorb all powers that are currently under the social power realm. Nock is attempting to show that even in the United States, the state is the enemy

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