RALEIGH – During a recent debate, I had an exchange with a couple of panelists not as liberal as I am. Discussing a particular government intervention, I argued that it would create more problems than it would solve. “Well, I just feel like we need to be compassionate,” my adversary retorted.

Normally, I take issue with the accusation that formulating good public policy isn’t compassionate. But during the exchange, it occurred to me that the real problem, the real source of disagreement between us had to do with the pronoun, not the adjective. Just what did he mean by “we”? He meant to refer to the government, of course. Therein lies the problem: the failure to advance an accurate and useful definition of government.

In a recent column, I wrote about my discovery years ago of economist Douglass North’s excellent definition. A state, he wrote, “is an organization with a comparative advantage in violence, extending over a geographic area whose boundaries are determined by its power to tax constituents.” A comparative advantage in violence? In my experience, modern-day liberals find such talk jaw-dropping. They don’t understand the association, at a fundamental level, of government with violence. “What’s violent about public education, or Social Security, or Medicaid?” they ask.

It’s mid-April. Something important gets mailed about now. If it doesn’t, bad things happen. Figure it out.

The legitimate use of physical force is what distinguishes government from other social institutions. Perhaps a better way to make the point is to discuss what government is not. Government is not a charity. It does not ask, nicely, for contributions to help the poor, or support the arts, or advance philosophical principles. Performing government’s core functions effectively – maintaining law and order, defending individual rights, financing the delivery of true public goods – certainly has beneficial consequences for a wide variety of identifiable social groups or causes. But that doesn’t make government a charity. It is coercive, not charitable.

Government is not simply a big family. Strictly speaking, families are not entirely built on personal choices. Children don’t agree to be born into their families, yet owe obligations to (and are owed obligations by) their parents. Still, it is perverse to ascribe familial characteristics to government officials and institutions. Governments do have duties to protect children from harm, of course, but that doesn’t make them parental. The intense bonds of love and loyalty within families cannot, by definition, be shared by everyone subject to a government (even in a small town). The intensity of the bond has a lot to do with its exclusivity, and of course with nature.

Government is not a business. It does not face the market test of earning profits. Its incentives and operating principles are entirely different from those of business. When someone promises to “run government like a business,” be concerned, not conciliated. This is what leads to bad public policies such as targeted tax incentives and other corporate subsidies.

Government is not “society.” As my sparring partner did in the recent debate, many on the Left use the two terms interchangeably. That’s mistaken. “Society” is an abstraction used to describe a complex web of individuals and social institutions. Government is one of those institutions. Families, charities, churches, businesses, and clubs are other examples. Importantly, that means that the president is the chief executive of the federal government, and the governor the chief executive of the state government. They are not the chief executives of their respective societies. No such positions exist (thank goodness).

Finally, government is not “we.” Sure, we are all citizens of governments – federal, state, and local. And if we choose, we can try to influence the selection of governmental leaders through elections and the persuasion of governmental officials to make certain decisions. But “we” are not the government. We are the subjects of government. Its managers can and often do enforce policies with which we strongly disagree. Such as pass regulations that are intended to help the disadvantaged but are counterproductive in practice. Don’t they have any compassion?

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.