If, as the media and certain politicians seem to want us to believe, we have a "broken society " (whatever on earth that might actually mean), surely it is just reflecting how "broken" its leadership, government, has become. And I don't mean just the current Labour government. I mean government as an institution, even our democracy itself, if you will.

The state and its agents and those who act with its protection have routinely perpetrated force, violence and coercion, against their own citizens, against other countries, for aeons. The whole model is based on us surrendering some of our personal sovereignty. Some would no doubt rather say "pool" than "surrender" but look around you; "pooling" implies much more of a consensual relationship than reality attests to.

From cradle to grave, as they once promised, the state imposes itself on our lives and choices by more or less coercion. From compulsion in education, via criminalizing consensual or victimless behaviour (even thoughts and opinions) and right through to prosecuting wars "in our name", commanding our young men and women to kill or be killed. And most of all perhaps through taxation - it never hurts as hard as on the pocket!

In turns the state seems to infantilise and nanny us, to absolve us of personal responsibilities, and then, moralizing, blame us for all our own ills. Those who would rule us cynically play on our fears and talk up our aspirations according to their need to gain and retain power. And a tiny minority of us in our broken system can make or break that power for them, so have disproportionate influence over our fellow citizens.

That this has always gone on need hardly be stated. The biggest mystery, as Milton Friedman said, is why human-kind seems collectively to submit to authority - especially remarkable really when you consider that every step of human advance has actually arisen from someone stepping beyond the current conventions, bending the rules, exceeding the norm.

Supposedly benign regimes create instruments to comfort us, to fool us into thinking they are prepared to limit their own authority, whether we call them Geneva Conventions, Human Rights Acts or Data Protection, and then seem to break their own principles when it suits them, call it Guantanamo, pre-charge detention and control orders or ID cards and state databases.

It is often said that ("successful") politicians display many characteristics of psychopathy. How much more "broken" can we get than to submit ourselves to being ruled and represented by smooth talking, self centered, pathological liars? How much more scary than that such people have their hands on both our wallets and on the nuclear triggers? Is it any wonder that life on some of our streets can be vicious?